Why love ‘Hamilton’?
A look at how this musical phenomenon has become the hottest ticket wherever it goes
Anyone who is vaguely interested in arts and culture has probably heard the same question many times in the past five years: “Are you going to ‘Hamilton’?”
And no, with apologies to our neighbours down the QEW, we’re not talking about Hamilton, Ont. “Hamilton” is the theatre show that everyone says you have to see — but what exactly is it?
It’s the 2015 musical written by LinManuel Miranda about the first secretary of the treasury of the United States, Alexander Hamilton.
Despite that grade school history class premise, “Hamilton” is perhaps most famous for being famous; tickets are notoriously tough to get wherever it goes (besides a national tour, the show has sit-down runs in New York, London, San Francisco and Sydney, and just closed one in Chicago). They sell out in minutes and then turn up on ticket reseller sites, sometimes with four-figure prices.
The buzz around “Hamilton” persists as it makes its Canadian debut in Toronto this week, even five years after its off-Broadway premiere. Mirvish Productions, the Toronto host of the U.S. tour, says the online queue for tickets hit as high as 50,000 in October, with as many tickets sold in one day. Now, hope for those who missed out resides in a daily web lottery.
The pursuit of “Hamilton” tickets has threatened to overshadow the show itself; seeing it has become a status symbol less than a badge of fandom. But if you are compelled to see “Hamilton,” know that there are reasons for its surge from experimental concept to musical theatre phenomenon.
You know “Hamilton” is a thing, here’s why.
It tells an old story in a new way
“The first thing that I think sets ‘Hamilton’ apart is its score; it’s just an amazing musical experience,” says Mitchell Marcus, artistic and managing director of Toronto’s Musical Stage Company. “There are very few moments in history where the voice of a Broadway musical legitimately matches the voice of a popular form of music to the point that it could play on the radio,” he adds about the way “Hamilton” mixes traditional Broadway elements into a score based on contemporary hip hop, rap and R&B.
“Secondly,” Marcus says, “it is such as a piece of activism, while also being enormously commercial and enjoyable by everybody. That is such a rare combination.”
“Hamilton” begins when the United States was still a concept. It explores founding father Alexander Hamilton’s influence in fighting for independence from Britain, forming the country’s first government and shaping its historical legacy as an experiment in governance. Miranda’s twist on the story was to highlight immigration, social mobility, idealism and work ethic, and cast the show entirely with performers of colour (the only main character who’s white is Britain’s King George).
One of the most famous lines from the musical is “Immigrants, we get the job
done” — a rallying cry for marginalized voices in the U.S., as well as musical theatre in general. Combined with its hip-hop sounds, “Hamilton” immediately made waves by reimagining how we tell stories about ourselves and for whom we tell them.
It has legitimate hip-hop credibility
“Hamilton” isn’t the first musical to use rap and R&B, but it’s certainly the most successful. Erin Lowers, hip-hop editor at Exclaim! Magazine and hiphop and R&B specialist at Google/YouTube Music, had heard of Miranda before “Hamilton” came on the scene.
“He’s pretty known within the hip-hop community as somebody who’s such a big fan of the music,” she says. “It plays to an era of New York rap in the ’90s. A lot of what he brings in is rooted in Notorious B.I.G., Mobb Deep, early Jay-Z. In the energy, it’s that grimy ’90s New York style, at a time when it was also very political. Rudy Giuliani was mayor and there was a lot of anger in that era.”
For example, Lowers says, Miranda’s song “Ten Duel Commandments” riffs on Notorious B.I.G.’s “Ten Crack Commandments.” “Say No To This” echoes LL Cool J’s “I Need Love.” In Hamilton’s signature song, “My Shot,” he spells out his name in the same way Biggie Smalls does in “Going Back to Cali.” Miranda pulls lines from Jay-Z’s “Izzo,” Mobb Deep’s “Shook Ones (Part II)” and Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message.”
Lowers says you can enjoy the musical without “understanding these little hidden tricks … But if you’re a hip-hop nerd, you’re going to catch the references. And that’s ultimately what rap culture was always about; it was always a coded language. If you knew, you knew.”
It’s a ‘you had to be there’ event
“I’ve seen the show on Broadway. I’ve seen the show in London. I’ve seen it in San Francisco. And with each of those audiences, you feel that everybody is part of an event,” says Michael Rubinoff, producing artistic director for the Canadian Music Theatre Project at Sheridan College, which developed the Canadian musical success story “Come From Away.”
“There’s a realness to the issues it’s discussing in the show because you’re physically present. You’re not on your phone. You’re not distracted. You’re engaged in a story that is really holding up a mirror to the current society.”
It’s changing what we think a Broadway musical can be
“It’s great to see that it’s the original stories told in original ways that ultimately break through,” says Marcus. “It’s almost never the jukebox musical or the movie musical remake. Since ‘Hamilton,’ there has really been some giant risk-taking.”
Other atypical Broadway musicals that have followed since “Hamilton” took the 2016 Tony Awards by storm include “Dear Evan Hansen,” which deals with mental health and suicide; “The Band’s Visit,” a slow, meditative story using klezmer music set in Israel; and “Hadestown” an adaptation of Greek myth with a folk and blues score.
“Hamilton,” says Marcus, “cracked everything open so that people stop being afraid of the idea of what’s commercial and what’s innovative; they stopped being two separate paths.” It has the potential to change power structures in theatre
Jewelle Blackman is a Toronto-born musical theatre performer making her Broadway debut in the Tony Award-winning “Hadestown,” which has one of the most diverse casts currently running. But as a Black woman, she didn’t always know that performing was an option.
“I didn’t become interested in musical theatre until I was in university. I was going to be a lawyer. And then I saw ‘The Lion King.’ That’s what did it for me and that’s what I think ‘Hamilton’ is doing for a lot of kids now,” she says. “And I hope that these young kids who are experiencing it now will become the thinkers and the doers, and the creative ones who will make new work and get produced.”
But an industry whose gatekeepers and tastemakers come from a specific segment of the population can be slow to change, she adds. “You would hope that change would come and it would awaken some people, and I think it has to a point.” It has its critics, too University of Toronto professor Shira Lurie teaches a course called “Hamilton: History and Musical,” which looks at the show’s portrayal of historical events and figures versus the facts.
“It’s easy to call ‘Hamilton’ groundbreaking in its race-conscious casting and musical styles, but when you look at it in terms of the history it’s actually very conservative,” says Lurie. “It falls into a genre of history that historians call ‘Founders Chic,’ biographies of great white men that are positioned as the prime movers of history, that it’s their genius and decision-making that caused historical events to happen.”
“Hamilton” makes its namesake a very clear hero for the audience to root for, but skims over aspects of his story and of early American society that are less rosy — slavery being the main one.
“‘Hamilton’ is the message of the American dream, right? That success is completely tied to effort and abilities. Anyone can make it and it’s on their own terms. It’s a comforting message, but it allows us to ignore the structures of inequality in our own system,” says Lurie.
But the American Dream narrative has changed since “Hamilton” first premiered.
“The Obama presidency had this idea of America as a place of hope; it’s imperfect but has immense promise. Now in the Trump era, the staying power of the musical is that it offers this idea of America that we no longer have, even for a Canadian audience,” Lurie says.
Marcus says the core of “Hamilton” will remain, even when the hype dies down.
“I think when we still see theatres doing ‘Hamilton’ in 50 years, it’s not going to be because of the time it got all this buzz. It’s because it has something so profoundly moving and exciting and transformative to say.”