IN THE SPOTLIGHT
The revolution comes again: Miranda and Kail on ‘Hamilton’
NEW YORK » Lin-Manuel Miranda likes to picture the millionaire, Mr. Howell, from “Gilligan’s Island,” saying the brag. You know the one. “Well, I saw it with the original cast.”
Miranda will steal that boast from anyone who ever saw “Hamilton” in its blistering first year and a half on Broadway. A live capture taken from two of the last performances with most of the original cast in June 2016 is streaming on Disney+, opening a new (and far less expensive) chapter in Miranda’s ever-evolving pop-culture phenomenon. In just a weekend, over Independence Day, more people will see “Hamilton” than ever before.
“There’s a part of me that just likes taking the brag away from people,” said Miranda, speaking from his home in Manhattan’s Washington Heights. “I wanted the world to have that brag.”
“Hamilfilm,” as it’s been nicknamed, landed in homes just days after Broadway announced that its shutdown will continue through at least the end of the year due to the pandemic. With the stage all to itself, “Hamilton” arrives as a godsend to theatergoers.
“That was a big reason we pushed up the release,” said Miranda of the film originally set to open in theaters in October 2021. “We need a reminder of how magical live theater is.”
One of the first things that hits you watching “Hamilton” is the sensation of being in the midst of applause, with a full house all around. Director Thomas Kail, who also shepherded the stage show, dispersed nine cameras and some 100 microphones around the Richard Rodgers Theatre to document two performances: a Sunday matinee and a Tuesday night show. Tracking and close-up shots were done in between.
For Kail, who spoke by Zoom alongside Miranda, it means giving everyone the same seat — and a chance to dig even deeper into “Hamilton.”
“There’s a level of inspection of the show that can be quite different than the endorphin rush of watching it knowing that might be your one chance,” said Kail. “In some ways, this will allow it to settle because now it’s yours.”
Since “Hamilton” was first performed at the Public Theater in January 2015 and moved to Broadway that August, the words mostly haven’t changed (though two expletives have been scrubbed to make the film PG-13). But as a rhyming, hip-hop omnibus of national history and identity, slavery and immigration, its power has resonated differently at different times.
Now, the “Rise up!” verses of “My Shot” will sound to many like they’re channeling the protest spirit that has swept across the country since the death of George Floyd. “Hamilton” remains a story of revolution — a triumphant and tragic one told passionately by performers of color. Everyone
who perishes in “Hamilton,” Miranda points out, dies from gun violence.
“Everything present at the founding is still present,” Miranda said. “When I am sitting still and listening right now, it’s to the young people who are leading these protests who are saying: This is what we stand for and this is what we won’t stand for.
“I’m struck by a section that was always treated as comic relief when the show first came out where there’s Samuel Seabury and he’s telling everyone to remain calm. And there’s Hamilton saying there’s nothing calm about what’s happening.”
“The revolution is coming,” Hamilton says.