Fans of ‘Hamilton’ will have to wait a while longer

By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”), Special to the CCJN

As expected, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton: An American Musical, swept the Tony Awards presentations on Sunday night with a total of 11 awards. While it did not tie or beat current record holder – Mel Brooks’ The Producers earned 12 Tonys – it nevertheless went into the record books as having the most nominations at 16.

Tony winners Lin-Manuel Miranda, right, and Daveed Diggs, left, on stage with Okieriete Onadowan and Anthony Ramos in “Hamilton: An American Musical.” (Photo by Joan Marcus)

Demand has so outpaced ticket availability that the only hopes many have of seeing the musical about Alexander Hamilton and the founding fathers is to shell out $898 or more per seat, hope to win the daily lottery of 21 front-row seats available for each performance or to stand in line for days on end hoping to snag a rare cancellation at the box office. Ticket scalpers regularly charge hundreds of dollars above face value because they can.

The sad truth is that many of the principals in this juggernaut including Manuel, the show’s creator, have left or are leaving soon to take on new roles in Hollywood. Miranda, the lyricist, bookwriter, composer and star was just announced as the lead in the Disney follow-up to Mary Poppins, in which he will star opposite Emily Blunt. Javier Muñoz, who has played Hamilton on Sunday matinee performances and filled in for the star when he experienced voice challenges, was announced on Friday, June 17 as the actor who will step into the leading role after July 9. Phillipa Soo, who plays Hamilton’s wife Eliza, also leaves that same day and has been announced as the lead in the forthcoming production of Amélié.

Tony nominee Christopher Jackson, who plays George Washington, is scheduled to star opposite NCIS’s Michael Weatherly in a new CBS vehicle, Bull, which begins filming soon. Jonathan Groff, who like Jackson was also nominated for Best Featured Actor in a Musical, left his role as King George III to start filming a picture and has been replaced by Rory O’Malley.

Tony winner Daveed Diggs, who is Jewish, with CCJN editor Alan Smason at the Richard Rodgers Theater on Broadway. (Photo by Alan Smason)

Fellow star Daveed Diggs, who actually won the Best Featured Actor Tony for his dual roles as Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson, identifies as Jewish through his mother and is one of the Hamil-Jews featured in an earlier CCJN article

So what to make of this feverish attraction for a show that cut its eyeteeth on non-traditional casting? Obviously, Hamilton isn’t just a curiosity wherein the historical figures of white planters, lawyers and businessmen are represented by African-Americans, Latinos and other ethnic groups.

Yo. It’s also not just a hip-hop musical.

Initially, Hamilton’s use of hip-hop rhythm and rhymes caused a stir among traditional Broadway theatergoers and still does. But Manuel’s earlier In the Heights, which won him his first Tony Awards as a composer in 2008, was ever more groundbreaking as a hip-hop musical and captured the feel and rhythm of the streets of New York. Given the subject, the word revolutionary seems more appropriate for Hamilton, but it has much more to it than a gizmo like rap music. To listen to some critics it is the end of the Broadway world, giving into the pop culture. But Hamilton has all of the features of a traditional book in which boy meets girl, boy loses girl and boy gets girl back. The backdrop of the American Revolution colors much of those actions. And as to revolution depicted on stage, how can we not forget the valiant fighters in Les Miserables, who give up their lives and pledge their tomorrows to oppose tyranny? In Hamilton we see the choreography of battle as clearly as we do the tryout line for those wannabes auditioning for the new show in A Chorus Line.

Indeed, what makes Hamilton the box office smash it has become is that it combines all of the elements of the very best that Broadway audiences have expected in the past in an obvious and sometimes not-so-obvious homage to the music that has shaped Broadway and the world.

Tony nominee Phillipa Soo, left, Best Featured Actress Tony winner Renee Elise Goldsberry and Jasmine Cephas Jones, the women of “Hamilton.” (Photo by Joan Marcus)

It’s easy enough to see from its bare staging and the use of its sharp and creative choreography by Tony winner Andy Blankenbuehler that director Tommy Kail (also now a Tony Award winner) wanted to link the American revolution with the similar story of the French students’ struggle in Les Miserables.

The drinking song with Hamilton, Lafayette, Hercules Mulligan and John Laurens, “The Story of Tonight,” is an obvious reference to the “ABC Café (Red and Black)” piece sung by Marius and his cohorts before the clash at the barricades and also resonates with the haunting “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” sung by Marius alone in the second act.

Understand that Hamilton is not unusual because of its casting of minorities in the roles of the founding fathers. Hamilton is subtitled An American Musical. That’s because it really is all about that which makes America great. It’s not just diversity. It’s about the American dream of immigrants coming to our shores and making a life for themselves and reshaping the nation in the process. In that way it’s not unlike the many stories Jews shared in first arriving to America.

Hamilton is a traditional show in many ways. It’s about boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl too. The show has some astounding moments – moments of loss, moments of unfaithfulness and moments of forgiveness.

It is extremely worthy of the 11 Tonys it received and will continue to engage a new generation of young Americans for sometime to come. In future years it will join the lexicon of great musicals that continue to endure through the ages: Phantom of the Opera, Wicked (in its final weekend at the Saenger Theater), Disney’s The Lion King and, of course, the longest-running American musical Chicago.

To which we say watch out. Eventually, everyone will be “In the Room Where It Happens.”

CCJN editor Alan Smason is the theatre critic on WYES-TV’s “Steppin’ Out,” the weekly arts and entertainment program in New Orleans and is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, the society of professional theatre critics.