At this point, what more can a review of any production of “Hamilton” say that hasn’t already been said about the beloved hit musical?
Since its debut 10 years ago, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s groundbreaking hip-hop-driven homage to America’s previously undersung founding father, Alexander Hamilton, has burst into Broadway’s billion-dollar-club and been showered with the kind of idolizing press usually reserved for a Taylor Swift album drop. The show is a phenomenon.
Critics have called it “a transformative theatrical experience,” “a sensationally potent piece of musical theater,” and “a brilliant feat of historical imagination.”
All apply to the touring production now playing at the West Herr Auditorium Theatre through November 30.
If you can spring for a ticket, which ranges from $59 to $182, don’t go “throwin’ away your shot,” as the ambitious young Hamilton sings. You’ll be poorer in the pocketbook, but a richer person. It’s that good.
But you’ve heard all this before.
What can be said of this production that couldn’t have been said of any other is that it is the best-timed version of “Hamilton” to date.
That’s not only because the country’s 250th birthday is around the corner, but also because Americans are perhaps as divided about their future as those who were fomenting revolution in 1776.
“Hamilton” last swept through Rochester in 2022. This time, its third arrival coincides with growing political violence and culture wars being waged in the name of patriotism.
It also dovetails nicely with “The American Revolution,” the provocative six-part documentary by Ken Burns that launched this week. The uprising has been mythologized as something that unified Americans, but as the film emphasizes, it sprung from deeply polarized people with selfish and selfless interests.
Like all works of art, “Hamilton” was a product of its time.
Miranda conceived of it in 2008 after reading Ron Chernow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Hamilton. Later that year, Barack Obama said in his victory speech, “If there is anyone out there . . . who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”
Seven years later, “Hamilton” premiered with a multi-racial cast playing the country’s white founding fathers and rapping a narrative celebrating the power and pluck of immigrants, namely Hamilton.
Few early Americans embody the country’s “up by your bootstraps” ethos as Hamilton, a self-educated Scotch-French-British orphan born out of wedlock in the Caribbean who arrived in New York at 17 and ended up an architect of the United States government. When he was done with that, he founded a newspaper that’s still published today.
Now, “Hamilton” tours amid an immigration crackdown by a United States government that punishes speech it dislikes and pushes “patriotic education” in American classrooms.
Against that backdrop, viewers of “Hamilton” today can be forgiven for finding calls to action in the show’s lyrics in ways they might not have before. The packed house in Rochester, for instance, roared with applause when Hamilton and Lafayette high-fived after defeating the British at Yorktown and sang, “Immigrants: We get the job done!”
The propulsive nature of “Hamilton” demands the actors maintain a breakneck pace. The choreography of their Colonial America is an adrenaline-fueled conveyor belt of perpetual motion, reinforced by liberal use of a revolving stage.
Catching every word of the sometimes rapid-fire rapping can be a challenge, but the pageantry fills in the blanks.
Tyler Fauntleroy plays Hamilton with an adequate degree of the range and urgency his character requires. Hamilton was as restless and tactless as he was pensive and genius.
But he is outshone at almost every turn by his main co-stars, who are more gifted of voice and convey more gravitas.
This is especially true of Jimmie “J.J.” Jeter as Hamilton’s friend-cum-rival-cum-nemesis Aaron Burr, who functions as a brooding, spineless, and embittered narrator. He grabs the audience’s attention from the opening scene and never lets go.
Lauren Mariasoosay’s vocal range enables her to stand out as Hamilton’s adoring and put-upon wife Eliza.
The real George Washington and Thomas Jefferson towered over Hamilton, who stood just 5 feet, 6 inches. Not in this production.
Rather A.D. Weaver (Washington) and Christian Magby (Jefferson and Lafayette) distinguish themselves from Hamilton with their stage presence and swagger. Weaver’s commanding singing voice captures all the complicated shades of his numbers and Magby imbues his performance with a vivid physicality that brings his characters to life.
Matt Bittner, who plays King George III, makes the most of his minimal stage time with his downright hilarious portrayal of the monarch as a spurned and slightly deranged lover trying to hold it together in the face of losing America.
“When you’re gone, I’ll go mad,” the king sings, “so don’t throw away this thing we had.”
But who can blame the king? Losing America isn’t something to take lightly.
Indeed, the show reminds audiences now that the idea of America – forever evolving and striving for perfection, however unattainable – isn’t something to take for granted, either.
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