"Hamilton" Returns To Proctors: It Was Worth The "Wait For It"
A hip-hop musical about Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton seems like a paradoxical proposition in and of itself, yet that is exactly what Lin-Manuel Miranda, multiple time Tony and Grammy Award winner and recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant, set out to do in creating the now ubiquitous Broadway musical “Hamilton” which came to Schenectady’s Proctors Theater for two weeks this March. As a Hamilton fan watching the musical for the first time live, I was awed by the cast, crew and orchestra’s masterful ability to bring a few hundred pages of my U.S. history textbook to life in a two-and-half hour musical. The show’s intricate and innovative choreography, combined with constantly shifting atmospheric lighting on a singular multi-purpose set, is truly a sensation that can only be fully experienced in a theater.
Inspired by Ron Chernow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Alexander Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda tells Hamilton’s story from the perspective of Aaron Burr, Hamilton’s friend turned arch-nemesis. The musical is split into two acts: Act I begins with Hamilton’s emigration from the Caribbean to New York, a city on the precipice of revolution; as a lieutenant, his fearless determination and battlefield intellect land him a promotion to Washington’s “right-hand man”. Act II follows Hamilton from an esteemed lawyer and prolific writer to the visionary behind America’s financial system, right up to his untimely death. Miranda highlights Hamilton’s exceptional and often overlooked contribution to the United States, depicting our Founding Fathers as flawed and mercurial human figures, rather than the solemn-faced politicians rendered in history textbooks. Buoyed by a score which fuses hip-hop, jazz, R&B and pop, Miranda’s storytelling is refreshing and comedic, enabling him to close the distance between the Founding Fathers and a modern audience, and drawing in even those with no prior historical knowledge to appreciate some of the most crucial figures in our nation’s founding.
The cast is intentionally quite small: the exclusionary and elite nature of the group they portray–those who had a hand in shaping the framework of American government—impresses upon the audience. Like the Original Broadway Cast, all of the national touring “Hamilton” casts have continued the tradition of playing dual roles, such as Lafayette/Jefferson and Mulligan/Madison, and are equally captivating in their performances, while adding new spins to their characters. Miranda experiments with music as a medium to express and reflect each political figure’s personality, attitudes and nature: Jefferson performs jaunty jazz numbers, whereas Madison speaks calmly and deliberately. Hamilton’s desperation and restlessness are apparent as he bursts into high-speed rap, propounding his early military ambitions and passionately advocating for his policies in cabinet battles. Alternately, Burr sings downtempo ballads contemplating his comparatively cautious outlook on life and keeps his political beliefs purposefully murky. This second duality between Hamilton and Burr serves as the central frame for the story. Miranda draws parallels between their trajectories–both were orphans, fought in the Revolutionary War and had contemporaneous careers as lawyers and politicians. Yet, in other ways, their circumstances could not be more different: Burr grew up in a wealthy family, immersed in the high society of colonial America since birth, juxtaposed with Hamilton, who was born illegitimately into poverty in the Caribbean.
Often this fact that Hamilton, one of the most prominent Founding Fathers and the architect of America’s financial system, was an immigrant is glossed over in textbooks, but Miranda’s musical puts this aspect of Hamilton’s background at the center of the story. Hamilton’s self-made journey—from “the orphan dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean / impoverished in squalor” to the “hero, scholar and ten-dollar founding father”—can be interpreted as one of the first embodiments of the “American Dream”. Propelled by sheer willpower and a resiliency to attain an education in the face of unimaginable adversity, Hamilton channeled his frenetic and prolific mind to transform a country that he may not have been born in, yet was the only place he could claim as his home. Hamilton’s political rivals, including Burr and Jefferson, constantly mock him in the musical for his immigrant identity, framing him as an outsider. Given the added connotation of the word “immigrant” when “Hamilton” permeated the mainstream—a time when strains of xenophobic rhetoric resurfaced in American politics—there is a poignant message in the continuity of these prejudices since our nation’s founding.
However, “Hamilton'' makes an even bolder statement with its choice of race-blind casting: most of the cast are people of color and first-generation immigrants. Challenging traditional Broadway casting, which has often relegated artists of color to stereotypical and background roles, “Hamilton” goes a step further: it is a powerful and haunting dichotomy to see slave owners like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison portrayed by men of color who could have been their property two hundred years ago. Sonically, Miranda and music director Alex Lacamoire, innovatively amplify the voices that reflect today’s America: most of the songs are rooted in hip-hop and R&B, with nods to disparate samples and allusions from primarily artists of color. Miranda sees the parallels between rappers from the ‘80s and ‘90s, crafting Hamilton’s narrative as a classic hip-hop story of the struggle to rise from the bottom to the top.
Subtly, “Hamilton” also critiques attempts to vilify and glorify historical figures. As Burr sings in “The World Was Wide Enough” after fatally shooting Hamilton at the duel in Weehawken, “history obliterates in every picture it paints, it paints me in all my mistakes…now I’m the villain in your history.” The Founding Fathers’ awareness of their legacies is also emphasized, and Hamilton uses this to justify exposing himself in the Reynolds Pamphlets. Part of the reason why “Hamilton” connects so well with a modern audience may be the parallels between our political dynamics then and now: America was the first nation to have modern political parties, as opposed to mere “factions”, which coexisted and debated (peacefully, if not always in a civilized manner); the contentious rivalries, polarizing figures, and notorious scandals have continued to this day. But I believe the unprecedented popularity of “Hamilton”–-what truly made it a “phenomenon”–-is simply its novel approach to teaching history. It is a truly unforgettable communal experience to watch “Hamilton” with hundreds of people in a theater, cheering together for Lafayette and crying with Eliza. In an era of digital streaming and standardized testing, “Hamilton” is a testament to both theater's enduring power to connect us and the importance of understanding the why behind what we learn. By retelling the stories of our nation’s founding with both levity and gravity, and focusing on the relationships and people behind the policies, “Hamilton'' proves that the facts and narratives within our history textbooks are actually inherently interesting—maybe the issue is with how we are presenting them.