News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Mon. Mar. 16, 2015: From Off-Broadway to the big lights of Broadway itself – the story of the rise from humble beginnings in Nevis to the founding father of the United States is earning rave reviews and bringing back Alexander Hamilton to life in a new urban style musical more than 210 years after his death.
Tony and Grammy Award winner Lin-Manuel Miranda plays Hamilton, the man who went from bastard orphan born in the Caribbean island of Nevis, West Indies, to President George Washington’s right hand man and the unlikely founding father of America, in the new musical titled simply ‘Hamilton.’
So far the show has earned rave reviews including in the New York Times and was featured on a recent CBS Sunday Morning telecast. It has emerged this winter as the most talked-about new American musical since “The Book of Mormon,” which opened on Broadway in 2011.
The show is playing a sold-out run Off-Broadway at the 2400-seat The Public Theater and tickets for “Hamilton” on Broadway have gone sale for the 11,000 seat Richard Rodgers Theatre (226 W. 46 St.). It will cost $12 million to mount on Broadway.
The two-hour-and-45-minute show is directed by Thomas Kail, inspired by the book Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow and features book, music, and lyrics also by Lin-Manuel Miranda. The show intertwines the musical genres of rap and R&B ballads with traditional musical-theater melodies to portray Hamilton as a striving immigrant.
The musical follows the life of Hamilton from his arrival in America to rebel to war hero; a loving husband caught in the country’s first sex scandal to the US Treasury head who made an untrusting world believe in the American economy.
Miranda, a Latino actor, brings Hamilton to life as an immigrant go-getter, who, lacking money and connections, hustled harder than his pedigreed peers to become a chief architect of American democracy.
The first half of the musical is devoted to Hamilton’s rise from his harsh beginnings and his role in the Revolution. It also includes his marital saga in which Hamilton falls in love with one of the wealthy Schuyler sisters (Angelica, magnificently played by Renée Elise Goldsberry) but marries instead her sister, Eliza (the captivating Phillipa Soo).
Miranda’s lyrics sum the boy born on Nevis and who grew up in St. Croix as: “The ten-dollar Founding Father without a father / Got a lot farther by working a lot harder / By being a lot smarter / By being a self-starter.”
Issues like slavery and race are touched upon as George Washington, played by Christopher Jackson; Eliza Hamilton, played by Phillipa Soo; and Hamilton’s lifelong friend/foil Aaron Burr, played by Leslie Odom Jr., all make their mark in this astonishing new musical exploration of Alexander Hamilton.
Tickets can be purchased via Ticketmaster at www.ticketmaster.com or 800-745-3000.
