The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
‘Spamilton’ is in Cleveland to lampoon ‘Hamilton’ with love
‘Forbidden Broadway’ mastermind couldn’t pass up making ‘Spamilton,’ a loving but pointed parody of the most exciting musical in years
Count Gerard Alessandrini among the many who were exhilarated when “Hamilton: An American Musical” set Broadway ablaze in 2015. ¶ Lin-Manuel Miranda’s sung-through, hip-hop-fueled, myriad-award-winning show about the life of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton was a fresh breath of creative air, says Alessandrini, who has lived in the Big Apple since 1979 and who since 1982 has been responsible for the
“Forbidden Broadway,” an evolving revue poking fun at the world of musical theater. ¶ “Broadway was getting rather old and tired,” he says. “There were a lot of the same types of shows — not that they were bad in themselves — but there were a lot of jukebox (musicals) with little story or revivals of classical musicals, which I’ve always liked. • “But, you know, how many times can you see ‘Gypsy’?” he asks with a laugh.
And, he says, the original musicals were often similar in tone and failed to break new ground. Not much had, he says, since Stephen Sondheim burst onto the Broadway scene decades earlier.
“That’s what I remember theater being like — it was very exciting to go to a show because you never knew how they were going to tell you the story in song. It was always a surprise,” Alessandrini says.
“And sometimes, (shows) were shocking and exciting,” he continues, “and Broadway, in the 2000s, had really lost that. So in 2015, ‘Hamilton’ comes along, and it was very exciting to see that return to Broadway — the element of surprise, the element of a new way to tell a story.
“You got that excitement pulsating in your heart that you just weren’t getting anymore. So I was happy to see ‘Hamilton’ come along and very grateful to Lin-Manuel for creating it.
“I wanted to be a part of that celebration.”
For Alessandrini, of course, that meant writing a parody of the show that would skewer “Hamilton,” Miranda and more. Thus was born “Spamilton: An American Parody,” which premiered in New York in 2016 and which has just launched a tour at Cleveland’s Playhouse Square, where it runs until Jan. 6.
If you’ve seen “Hamilton” or even listened to the Broadway cast recording, you can’t help but appreciate the show’s density, thanks largely to its mixture of rap and traditional singing. It must have been challenging to write, as, you would imagine, was a parody of it.
“Yes it was, it was,” says Alessandrini, on the phone from Cleveland just before the Playhouse Square fun of “Spamilton.” “It’s the same (duration) as a ‘Forbidden Broadway’ show, but it’s twice as many pages. So, yes, the parody had to be just as dense as ‘Hamilton.’
“It was a challenge for me to learn how to do rap — you know, write rap parody — but, slowly but surely, I figured it out.”
If you’ve found yourself breathlessly trying to keep up with “Hamilton,” Alessandrini says you shouldn’t feel badly.
“I think that’s part of the joy of a rap song or of LinManuel’s ‘Hamilton’: It all goes by you so fast — it’s always ahead of you and sometimes you miss some of the clever words they said, but you get the gist anyway. That’s also true of ‘Spamilton’ — it’s an avalanche of words.”
While he adores “Hamilton,” Alessandrini says he had to be pointed while jabbing at it.
“One of the keys to writing good parody is I have to make a point. ‘What’s my critical point here? What am I saying?’ So it can’t be too soft. It can’t be too sophomoric, or it’s just not interesting enough.”
He offers some more insight into his writing process: “I like to stay close to the original set of words. I love to take a phrase and change just a few words … from the original so it has a completely different meaning.”
A fun example of what Alessandrini calls taking a song and “turning it inside out” is his parody of early “Hamilton” number “Aaron Burr, Sir,” which repeatedly uses a simple but effective rhyming device with the name Burr. In Alessandrini’s “Aaron Burr, Sir, Nervous-er,” the lyrics take the idea to a further, ridiculous point:
“Pardon me, are you Aaron Burr, sir?” one character asks another.
“I’m Leslie Odom as Burr, sir.”
“Well, sure sir. I’m LinManuel as Hamilton at your service, sir. Now that I’ve cast you, sir.”
“I’m getting nervous, sir.” “Sorry, sir. That’s worse, sir.”
“I’m getting nervous-erer.”
(Odom goes on to tell Miranda, “Be terser in your verse, sir, you’re no Johnny Mercer.”
Alessandrini says when he analyzed Miranda’s version, he found it to be just right on the line of between genius and silliness.
“I said to myself, ‘If he had done just one more “er” rhyme, it would have gone over to the side of parody.’ Therefore, I crossed that line from genius to parody by adding a few more (rhymes). I hope he doesn’t mind; He’s the genius, and I’m the jokester.”
It certainly sounds as though Miranda doesn’t mind. Alessandrini says the “Hamilton” mastermind was aware of his work from attending a “Forbidden Broadway” that took on Miranda’s previous show, “In the Heights” — “And that was kind of a mean one, too,” Alessandrini says with a laugh. He saw “Spamilton” with a couple of the members of the “Hamilton” artistic team.
“They were just on the floor laughing — they loved it,” says Alessandrini, who adds that Miranda appreciated the show had a young cast. “He gave the whole cast and crew tickets to ‘Hamilton,’ which must have been thousands of dollars worth of tickets.”
Before casting the tour and conducting a few works of rehearsals of “Spamilton” in New York, Alessandrini tweaked the show a bit.
“The script is topical,” he says. “It’s about ‘Hamilton,’ but it has many topical references to Broadway and to media itself — even things like the movie ‘Mary Poppins (Returns)’ since LinManuel’s in it. So I sort of brushed off the dust in the script.”
It’s no coincidence that “Spamilton” on this tour is visiting cities that, like Cleveland, have already hosted a touring production of “Hamilton.”
“We’re sort of following them around,” he says with a laugh. “And they know it, too.”
Nonetheless, Alessandrini says it’s a great dancing show, crediting choreographer Gerry McIntyre for that, and insists it’s ultimately simply an entertaining show.
“You don’t really have to see ‘Hamilton’ to get ‘Spamilton’ — it’s the type of comedy that can stand on its own.”
“He gave the whole cast and crew tickets to ‘Hamilton,’ which must have been thousands of dollars worth of tickets.” — Gerard Alessandrini, creator of “Spamilton,” on “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda’s reaction to the show