Op-ed: Broadway's Hamilton is an enormous cultural phenomenon
On April 2, I was lucky enough to see Hamilton on
Broadway. The show is written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and depicts the life of
Alexander Hamilton through primarily rap music. Many other styles of music
appear throughout, including but not limited to the R&B feel of “Wait ForIt” and the boogie groove of “What’d I Miss.”
The show also includes Leslie
Odom Jr. as Aaron Burr, Christopher Jackson as George Washington, Conestoga
Valley graduate Jonathan Groff as King George III, and Phillipa Soo as Eliza
Hamilton. The soundtrack currently sits at number twelve on the Billboard 200
chart and number one on the cast album chart.
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| Javier Muñoz in the role of Alexander Hamilton. |
Normally, Miranda plays the role of Alexander Hamilton, but for
this particular performance, his alternate, Javier Muñoz played the part. After
listening to the soundtrack more than enough, I was used to Miranda’s tone and
his inflection on every line, so I was apprehensive about seeing Muñoz. At the
end of the show, I had been entirely turned around. It was hard to imagine
anyone other than Muñoz playing the part. Leslie Odom Jr. was also one of the
highlights.
For those who aren’t experts on early American history (it’s okay;
I wasn’t either until Hamilton came along), Aaron Burr fatally shot
Alexander Hamilton in a duel, which Burr tells the audience in the first song.
It was enthralling to watch Burr’s relationship with Hamilton darken as time
went on as their opinions began to differ more. “Wait For It,” my personal
favorite song, represents the feelings that Burr keeps suppressing as Hamilton
takes what he wants and raises the stakes. Eliza Hamilton’s (portrayed by
Phillipa Soo) “Burn” is an incredibly powerful piece of music that takes the
audience through her thoughts and feelings. Add those songs to “Yorktown,”
“Blow Us All Away,” and “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story,” and
Miranda has created a soundtrack more diverse than the cast performing it.
Lastly, I have to mention Daveed Diggs, who plays Marquis de
Lafayette in the first act and Thomas Jefferson in the second. His acting was
comedically brilliant; both of his roles were so differentiated from the rest
of the cast, but also from each other. I left the theater wishing that I could
see him in a movie, a television series, or another musical, but he already has
a career as a rapper and is doubtful to take many other comedic roles. He is an
incredible rapper, as he demonstrates in “Guns and Ships,” but he really stole
the show with his acting.
The show has become especially noteworthy not only because of its
music and actors, but also because it features a largely black and Hispanic cast in a show that isn’t specifically about race. When we think about
ethnically diverse shows, The Color Purple and Once on This Island
come to mind. These, while they are masterpieces, feature black and Hispanic casts because one is about slaves and one is about peasants in Haiti. Even one
of Miranda’s earlier works, In the Heights, fell into the trap of
casting minorities for plot purposes as it follows the Latino population of
Washington Heights.
Hamilton is unconventional in that (other than the
part of John Laurens) there are few references to race or racial oppression.
The fact that we can cast actors of color to play traditionally white figures
like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson is refreshing, not only because it
brings minorities to the white male-dominated history of America, but also
because it brings white audiences to a rap show. American society has
progressed so much in that people of color have just as good a chance to get
cast as anyone else, and, quite frankly, there
is no reason that casting inequality should have taken this long.
Tickets for Hamilton are sold out until far into the future,
unless you want to pay obscenely expensive prices for them, but you can listen
to the cast recording, and I strongly recommend it. It is a great musical about
American history, and it’s an enormous cultural phenomenon that will leave its
impact on the world for generations to come.
--Logan Emmert, LSNews.org Columnist
Photos courtesy of HamiltonBroadway.com
