And basically everything at the time was of the utmost importance.īut a perfect example is the song “The Room Where It Happened”, Aaron Burr’s lament about “how the sausage gets made.” Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison brokered a deal that placed the banks in NYC and the nation’s capital in DC. The two men circle each other their whole lives, constantly running up against each other at pivotal moments in history. play Hamilton and Burr respectively and their chemistry is undeniable. Neither man is sinner or saint both have flaws–Burr’s turn out to be fatal, for Hamilton and for his own dreams. Or is it hero? One of the best things Hamilton does is complicate our view of history. Burr plays the role of narrator in the show–as well as the villain. Hamilton is also, surprisingly, very much about Aaron Burr. Remember what I said about life-changing? As I write this, it’s the #1 rap album on Billboard. You can fit in twice as many words and frankly, it’s still not enough. To cover that amount of information, and to even scratch the surface of all Hamilton said and did, rap is really the only way to go. Alexander Hamilton led a batshit crazy life, and the show covers all of it: from his birth on Nevis to his creation of our entire financial system to his death at the hands of VICE PRESIDENT Aaron Burr. My life is forever changed.Ī | BN | K | AB Hamilton is based on Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton, an 800-page biography Lin-Manuel Miranda picked up on vacation and immediately realized should be a hip-hop musical–to the point that he Googled it assuming someone had done it already. I’ve watched the video of Miranda’s performance of Hamilton’s opening song at the White House in 2009 more times than I can count (though YouTube probably knows.) Suffice it to say that my very high expectations were met. It would take too long to track all my reactions to Hamilton (although, if I recall correctly, my first thought was “Where has Daveed Diggs (Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson) been all my life?”). It’s also cast with almost entirely non-white actors, making it, as Miranda says, the story of America then told by America now. It’s also a “hip-hop” musical, in that it is rapped and sung through, with influences and references from across the music spectrum. It’s the story of the creation of America, and makes it clear how completely crazy this experiment of a country was, and still is*. It’s also about a thousand other things you probably never learned about in history class. You can’t imagine), 1st treasury secretary, and (250-year old spoiler) killed in a duel. Revolutionary war hero, prolific writer (like, you don’t even know. Written by Tony (and Emmy, and Grammy, and MacArthur Genius) winner Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton tells the story of founding father Alexander Hamilton. I am suffering for my art.)įirst things first: what is it? Hamilton: An American Musical is…an American musical. (Also, in order to do this justice, I’m listening to the second half of the second act for the first time since…I saw the show. I could do Hamiltonian amounts of writing about Hamilton. Therefore, I can’t share all my thoughts about this show, because that would take a book. But then I realized I wasn’t writing a book. I thought I knew what I was doing when I said yes to writing about Hamilton. Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story I asked if she’d be willing to write a review, and not only did she respond immediately with a huge “YES” but then demanded I give her a word count because she could go on for days. When Esi Sogah was a guest on an episode of the podcast, she talked a little about the musical Hamilton, and how much she loves it.
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