HAMILTON: Hip Hop or not 5 Reasons Hamilton is a Must See Experience

Hamilton is the toast of New York. $28 million advanced sale makes it one of the most anticipated shows to hit Broadway. Not bad for a guy who the Treasury Department recently decided to remove from from the $10 bill, in spite of being the person responsible for our country's financial system. Here's what I can say for sure they were right. The revolution will not be televised. Because it's playing 8 shows a week on Broadway.

For folks like me, residents of Twitterico and a deep admirer of Lin-Manuel Miranda's work, Hamilton was an exercise of patience. Imagined as a concept album (Hamilton's Mixed Tape) and given a tease of what would become the opening number during a 2009 performance at the White House I have followed the journey along with thousands of Miranda's twitter followers as Hamilton grew into a fully realized musical that embraces the meaning and significance of words while conveying the visual melting pot we were taught to believe our nation was and continues to be. 

Hamilton will open later this week with the wind at its back. Success at the Public Theater and word of mouth have made this show the hottest ticket in town. Just ask the several hundred people lined up daily for a chance to win $10 tickets during the #Ham4Ham lottery. I've had the good fortune to see both the original staging downtown and the tweaked version that now resides at the Richard Rogers Theatre. 

One thing's certain, Hamilton steps into the limelight with a lot of hype. I thought I'd offer five reasons why this show exceeds expectation.

1) Is it a Hip Hop Musical or is it a musical with Hip Hop?

Hamilton's secret beauty is that it breaks down assumptions within the story and more importantly those we enter into the theater with as an audience. I've heard and read a lot about how this show changes the game, but to assume that it's because of the show's grounding in Hip Hop would be a mistake. Doing so would minimize the lyrical dexterity and historical accuracy that this show deploys from its opening snap. It changes our theater vernacular in a way the expands the audience's vantage point rather than carving out an entirely new road. That's its secret weapon. Manuel's music evolves with these characters. We are given a musical journey that possesses raw staccato passages to convey the urgency and hunger of the show's namesake. Alexander Hamilton arrived in the country a man of no importance. His drive, his words and his relentlessness drove him to center of the creation of a country ("I'm just like my country, I'm young scrappy and hungry"). A parallel rises from the writing of Federalist Papers and the platform Hip Hop gave a generation of voices that hadn't been heard. A tight, caustic and inciting rap battle is the pinnacle of choices to represent the wizardry and wordsmiths our founding fathers were. Hip Hop serves as the perfect vehicle for the story of our countries founding. It's a musical movement born out of the desire for freedom of expression. Yes, Hamilton is a musical that opens it's doors to a world that Broadway often doesn't speak about, but the brilliance is that Lin-Manuel Miranda has done so while holding on to his reverence for all that musical theater has created before. 

2) A World Where Women have Voice

The women. The Schuyler sisters to be specific didn't have to play a prominent role for this show to be successful. In fact they could have simply been pivot points that offered context for Hamilton's social climb and downfall. Instead, their stories, their point of view is vividly given life both in stellar performances from Renée Elise Goldsberry and Phillipa Soo and through music that envisions smart women who understood while they may have been powerless in the framing of government, they still possessed power that had purpose in driving the actions of our Founding Fathers. It matters for the story to give the audience a full picture of who Hamilton was and it matters for how we tell our history. For someone like me, who is raising a daughter, seeing and understanding the significance of the roles women have in our country since its inception is important. Who tells your story is present in every facet of this work. It is particularly stunning that a story about the actions of men is closed by a woman. The idea that as women, the Schuler sisters found a way to use (and deny) their voice is magnificently powerful. Their opening number invokes the feeling of a Destiny's Child anthem. But as the show and women evolve their complexity and search for a place in the world mirrors that of Hamilton's journey. Time and care are given to this story thread and what we get in return is a depth of understanding for the people behind our history and their humanity.

3) A. Ham v. A. Burr: When do we charge forward, when do we hold back and wait?

The show does a terrific job of navigating the complex lifelong intertwined relationship between Aaron Burr and Hamilton. How these gentleman from similar beginnings end up on opposite sides of a gun barrel is much richer than a rivalry gone too far. This show mines that gold to provide opposite sides of a coin. They embody two different tactics and paths for survival and success. Hamilton's brash, impatient action driven nature could easily be interpreted as impetuous even though he was intentional. His hunger drove him. Burr, as our narrator provides the exact opposite. He's a man lying in wait. As you watch the show, Burr often lurks in the shadows of a scene. He's observing, commenting, but never fully engaged, never committed. Miranda chooses a interesting moment to show how similar these men are in their core only to watch how their choices and methods set them on very different trajectories. Leslie Odom Jr. as Burr gives us a performance journey that possesses remorse and envy in places where he could have merely been foil for the stubbornness of Hamilton. By doing so, his pivotal number "The Room Where it Happens" becomes a showstopping moment. Not merely for the insanely large performance he gives, but for the significance of how much it reveals that Burr and Hamilton are not that much different in their desires. While the songs "My Shot" and "Wait for it" establish Hamiton and Burr's differing approaches, this final number by Burr stirs that desire and power are an elixir no man is immune to, even one as calculated as Burr. 

4) Team of Rivals, actually a team unrivaled.

Much has been said about Lin-Manuel Miranda and his creation of this show. To stop there would undercut the talent embedded in this production. The creative team led by director Thomas Kail alongside choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler, set designer David Korins, costume designer Paul Tazewell, and musical director Alex Lacamoire make up a dream team for musical theater in the modern age. These gentlemen are the reason Hamilton is a Broadway show and not a concept recording called Hamiton's Mixed Tape. Kail's direction weaves together several points of view with seamless transitions providing for the passage of time, location and momentum for the characters. A great deal of this happens on the turntable and structural set Korins has the world inhabit. It's fitting that a story about the founding fathers is a framework and scaffolding. The visual works on multiple levels and keeps the focus centered on the language and verse rapidly coming our way. Blankenbuehler's choreography is storytelling at its finest whether it's animating a bullet travelling or using movement to covey urgency, fear and sadness. There is a breathtaking sequence towards the close of act 1 that if you stripped away the music and lyrics the story would remain perfectly in tact. These components speak to why this show is a masterpiece. Speaking of masterful. The puzzle that Lacamoire has put together as musical director is not to be understated. It would be easy to let the fact that the show is grounded in Hip Hop tell its musical tale. In reality Lacamoire has created a fabric of music that could have felt arbitrary, like selecting songs from a jukebox. Instead he has woven together a pattern that infuses the multiple genres that encompass Hamilton aligning the British Pop sounds to Rap as though they we always made to fade in and out of one another.  

5) This is OUR story. We are all immigrants

At the end of the day this is an immigrant story. A story that brings the internal motivation and optimistic urgency one feels to start a life to the forefront. This is true whether it's the life of a country, an individual or a legacy. Much has been said about the color blind casting of this show. It's significant to me not simply because it reflects our world today, but because it concretely says the stories of our founding father's belong to us all. 

I saw my first Broadway show when I was 9 years old. It was 10 more years before I saw characters who looked like me on a stage and reflected a world I knew. And not until I was 35 and watched Mandy Gonzalez sing about the challenges of living in two worlds did I see someone tell a story that reflected my personal journey. This is what makes Hamiton special. I sat in both the Public and Richard Rogers theaters as they filled with patrons, young, old, black, white, men, women.

All of us were taken into this immigrant story, because all of us can relate to wanting more than the hand life has dealt us. All of us can relate to the disappointment and betrayal that ambition can often cause. All of us can relate to the impulse to barrel ahead and the conflicting instinct that tells us to slow down and pick our moment more carefully. The success and failures that encompass Hamilton's life are the shared experience that this show conveys each of us at every performance. 

Who lives who dies who tells your story? 

At the close of In The Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda's protagonist Usnavi declares: 

"Yeah I'm a streetlight chilling in the heat. 

I illuminate the stories of the people that I meet. 

Some have happy endings, some are bittersweet. 

But I know them all and that's what makes our life complete. 

If it's not me who keeps our memories, 

who's gonna keep the coffee sweet with secret recipes." 

What clearly elevates Hamilton is the truism that who tells the story is often as important as whose story is being told. That's the defining authentic voice Lin-Manuel Miranda gloriously brings to musical theater. He's a storyteller and the prism his light shines through is multifaceted representing the many intersections at which so many of us live our lives. Where Sondheim's music spoke honestly to the raw emotions of a generation, I believe Lin-Manuel Miranda speaks to the voices of the unseen. Those who often go unheard and have been declared 'other' as they travel through different facets of society. His words speak to the declaration of people simply looking for their place in the world. His, is a portrait of how and why life matters. 

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story? As a fan of musical theater all my life Hamilton is a show for the ages and proves Lin-Manuel Miranda is a storyteller for a generation.  #YayHamlet