Shoba Narayan and Joseph Morales/HAMILTON Nation Tour (c) Joan Marcus
Within Hamilton’s first two numbers, a shy, young immigrant from the West Indies grows into a towering intellect worthy to help found a new nation. Before you know it, Alexander Hamilton is spinning rhymes on taxation without representation.
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s audacious reimagining of the American Revolution and its aftermath occupies Uihlein Hall with a multi-ethnic spectacle of music and dance. The touring company executes the production brilliantly. Even when the cast is frozen in tableaux, the revolving stage keeps the story in motion. No one stands still for long—there is a revolution to win and a country to define once the battle is won.
Directed with pinpoint precision by Thomas Kail, the cast members pull it off no sweat. They rap and segue into more conventional Broadway melodies without missing a beat, and the leading characters are endowed by their actors with personality. Hamilton (Joseph Morales) is a good man burning with ideas and driven (to his detriment) to speak honestly. His opposite number, Aaron Burr (Nik Walker), is charmingly sinister, cynical, resentful over every perceived slight and envious of Hamilton’s success. They are the yin and yang that propels the story.
Also impressive is George Washington (Marcus Choi), brought to life from the mythical portrait of the Founding Father without doing harm to the myth. He strides out almost piratical in his black tricorn, gold epaulets and long sword, but his dynamism is tempered by the wisdom many of his colleagues lack. “Dying is easy, young man, living is harder,” he tells Hamilton. As president, he is the conciliator between polarized personalities and factions. To everyone’s dismay, including Hamilton, he chooses to step aside, setting a precedent for the orderly transfer of power.
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Yes, there is a love story, a happy marriage eventually marred by Hamilton’s sexual indiscretions and embodied heartfully by Erin Clemons as Eliza Hamilton. But the main thrust of Hamilton is on the body politic. The struggle against the British and over the authoring of the Constitution is neatly summarized. Rapping on “The Federalist Papers” and the need for a national bank? Miranda shows how those arguments continue to resonate today.
Burr isn’t Hamilton’s only opponent. Thomas Jefferson (Warren Egypt Franklin) is depicted as a slithering schemer who sat out the Revolution in Paris. He drops fancy words about life and liberty but, as Hamilton quips, “We know who’s really doing the planting.” One of the central arguments of the early republic was between Jefferson’s agrarian nostalgia and Hamilton’s groundwork for commerce and industry. Jefferson gets the temple-like monument, but Hamilton deserves his place on the $10 note for establishing the good credit of the United States.
Hamilton is strangely memorable in the quieter moments when George III appears. Snide and fey, in his first scene he plays the jilted lover who fails to grasp the reasons for the breakup. His numbers have the slight suggestion of 1960s baroque pop—a lost number by The Left Banke? The routine is part of Miranda’s omnivorous set of sources, starting with Ron Chernow’s biography and embracing references to Gilbert and Sullivan, 18th century balladry and Grandmaster Flash.
Through Nov. 17 at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts, 929 N. Water St. For tickets, visit marcuscenter.org/show/hamilton.
