Following up on last week’s post, Happy Ten-Year Anniversary: Hamilton: The Free Press, Could ‘Hamilton’ Be Made Today?:
As the smash-hit musical celebrates its 10th anniversary, it feels like a time capsule from a different America. …
I went to the Richard Rodgers Theatre last week to see Hamilton as it was celebrating its 10th anniversary on the Great White Way, a tenure that only the most successful of musicals ever achieve. I was one of the many New Yorkers who had fallen hard for the show and its spectacular music when it first opened, and I wanted to see whether it had stood the test of time.
Yet when I got home from the show that night, it was that original unveiling in the White House that I found myself turning to. Rapping about the life of Alexander Hamilton (The ten-dollar Founding Father without a father / Got a lot farther by working a lot harder / By being a lot smarter, by being a self-starter) was so unexpected, so startling, that a sense of absolute wonderment took over. …
At the performance I saw last week, the audience … gave the actors a standing ovation. But there was no innocence involved, no sense of discovery or wonder. They were cheering because the actors had given them exactly what they had come for: 46 fabulous songs, and a show they already knew and loved. The audience was primarily from out of town. …
If you see a lot of Broadway theater, you won’t be surprised to hear that Hamilton today is workmanlike but uninspired. The stars—including Miranda, Odom, Jonathan Groff (who played King George III), and Phillipa Soo (Eliza Hamilton)—are long gone. The current performances don’t crackle with the same energy they did a decade ago.
John McWhorter, the Columbia professor who has forgotten more about musical theater than I’ll ever know, noticed—as did I—that the actors weren’t enunciating the lyrics all that distinctly. (Maybe they didn’t have to since everyone in the audience knew the songs.) There was much more Jerome Robbins–style dancing than I had remembered, which I found both distracting and detracting.
But Hamilton-goers are still paying upward of $500 a ticket, and every one of Richard Rodgers’ 1,319 seats is taken every night. It’s such an economic powerhouse that it scarcely matters that Miranda et al. are no longer on the premises.
What I scarcely noticed last week—what nobody seems to notice anymore—was the aspect of the show that truly set it apart a decade ago: the decision by Miranda and director Thomas Kail to cast black and Hispanic actors in the roles of the white Founding Fathers. The racial diversity of the actors—that’s what everyone rhapsodized over. Ten years later, though, it is so baked into the show it seems unremarkable.
In an essay she wrote in 2016, Annette Gordon-Reed, the Harvard historian, wrote that the multiracial cast was the reason a show that was so uncritical of our flawed Founding Fathers wound up being so universally praised. “The actors portraying Hamilton, Washington, Jefferson, and the other major characters are all people of color,” she wrote. “If one of the principal concerns about the leaders of the early American Republic is their ill treatment of people of color, having people of color portray these men neutralizes that concern.” …
Looking back, I’m reminded of one of my favorite lyrics: What a time to be alive! In retrospect, those years between 2009, when Miranda first sang the opening number at the White House, and the start of 2017, when Obama exited stage left for Trump, were a high-water mark of a particular political and cultural moment.
Looking back, I’m reminded of one of my favorite lyrics: What a time to be alive! In retrospect, those years between 2009, when Miranda first sang the opening number at the White House, and the start of 2017, when Obama exited stage left for Trump, were a high-water mark of a particular political and cultural moment. …
From a Trumpian point of view, Hamilton would seem to be a singing and dancing exercise in DEI. After Trump took over the Kennedy Center, Miranda quickly announced that he had withdrawn Hamilton from its upcoming schedule. A few weeks later, during Trump’s first tour of the performance space, he told reporters he had never liked Hamilton, and said that “hits” like Les Misérables would do well at the Kennedy Center. …
[A]lthough Hamilton is about American governance during and after the Revolutionary War, the show has always transcended contemporary politics. Neither the progressive left nor the MAGA right can put a glove on it. Perhaps that’s why it still irks both sides. …
Hamilton’s bones are too solid, its music too great. It doesn’t require Tony Award–winning performances to bring enjoyment to an audience. That’s what it’s been doing for a decade, no matter what the politics of the moment, and that’s what it will continue doing. Hamilton has never thrown away its shot.
New York Times, Yankees’ ‘Hamilton’ Hat Marks Team’s First Broadway-Inspired Stadium Giveaway:
The New York Yankees weren’t going to throw away their shot to create a “Hamilton” cap to celebrate the Broadway hit’s 10th anniversary.
Last month the team announced it would recognize a decade of Lin Manuel Miranda’s award-winning, hip hop-infused onstage American history lesson by giving away a co-branded Yankees/Hamilton cap at its Aug. 25 game against the Washington Nationals (of course, given that night’s theme).
Two of the most recognizable brands in New York adorn the “midnight navy blue” adjustable cap which features a “Hamilton”-inspired gold interlocking “NY” Yankees logo on the front and the Broadway play’s gold star logo topped by a silhouette of Miranda’s Alexander Hamilton pointing to the sky on the side.
The hats will be handed out to the first 10,000 fans that arrive at the Yankees-Nationals game.
