Theatre in Review: Hamilton (The Public Theater)

	Okieriete Onaodowan, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Daveed Diggs, Anthony Ramos, and company. Photo: Joan Marcus

I admit it: When I first heard that Lin-Manuel Miranda had written a hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton, I immediately thought of the unintentionally hilarious 1981 flop Marlowe, a rock musical about the Elizabethan playwright. ("He's a 16th-century man with a 20th-century mind!") Really, was there a musical in the life of the man who established the national bank of the United States? Was this material that sings?

It took about five minutes -- no, make that three -- of viewing Hamilton for my folly to be made evident. More than anything, a good musical needs a distinct style and a clear point of view, both of which Hamilton has in spades. Breaking the seemingly ironclad rule that biographical drama fails when it tries to cover too much material, Hamilton gives us the sweep of its subject's adult life, creating an epic musical drama that is by turns stirring, funny, and heartbreaking.

The brilliance of Miranda's conception lies in the use of contemporary music styles to give a vivid, present-tense quality to a story that spans the last quarter of the 18th century. As seen here, the American Revolution is the product of young, passionate, hot-tempered rebels who, unthinkably, challenge the world's most powerful nation. It's a messy, complicated business that more than once careens uncomfortably close to disaster, and it's populated with a cast of titanic egos, all of whom have wildly varying ideas about how the American experiment should be conducted.

At the center of it all is Alexander Hamilton, who rises from unknown immigrant to George Washington's right-hand man, plays an influential role in the creation of the US Constitution, and subsequently establishes the country's financial system. (The libretto also takes time for the sex scandal that short-circuited Hamilton's political career and his vicious infighting with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.) Providing a constant undercurrent of tension is Hamilton's lifelong rivalry with the cagey, careerist Aaron Burr, climaxing in the duel in Weehawken, New Jersey, which left Hamilton dead and Burr's reputation in tatters.

It's a crowded, tumultuous story powered by a river of fiercely driving music and cataracts of densely layered, intricately rhymed words. Hamilton, a Caribbean immigrant, comes to New York to make his fortune, bringing energy and disruptive ideas to a colony that is struggling to establish its own identity. The defiantly anachronistic music is central to the show's effect: In an early scene, the Episcopal bishop Samuel Seabury mounts a soapbox, warning his fellow citizens, to the tune of a gavotte, "Chaos and bloodshed are not a solution/Don't let them lead you astray/This Congress does not speak for me." Hamilton, furious at such appeasement-minded sentiments, jumps in, disrupting Seabury's placid protest with the jagged rhythms and run-on sentences of hip-hop: "Chaos and bloodshed already haunt/Us, honestly you shouldn't even/Talk and what about Boston?/Look at the cost, 'n all that we've lost 'n you talk/About Congress?/My dog speaks more eloquently than thee!" By this point, it is clear that more than one revolution is taking place on the stage of the Public's Newman Theatre.

Miranda's second masterstroke is the deployment of a multicultural cast: We are seeing the birth of the nation as presented by a company -- black, white, Asian, Latino -- that reflects the American reality of today. (Hamilton was a native of Nevis his father was Scottish, but the rumor persists that he had Creole blood.) The musical's major conflicts -- the urban north vs. the rural south, a strong national system vs. states' rights, and the festering legacy of slavery -- have not lost their urgency. Hamilton, the musical, draws a direct line from 1776 to 2015, binding past and present history into an argument that has yet to be resolved.

Thomas Kail has assembled a superb cast beginning with Miranda himself, whose impetuous, headstrong, outspoken Hamilton is the center around whom whirls a gallery of vividly drawn characters. Leslie Odom, Jr. is the sleek, feline Burr, whose advice to Hamilton ("Talk less, smile more") goes unheeded. Phillipa Soo is radiant as Eliza, Hamilton's deeply loyal wife, whose bedrock strength is made clear in a devastating scene of forgiveness. Renée Elise Goldsberry is a fiercely intelligent Angelica Schuyler, who delivers Hamilton to her sister, then lives to regret it. Christopher Jackson is an imposing George Washington, his maturity standing in strong contrast to Hamilton and his rabble-rousing colleagues. Daveed Diggs delivers in two roles, as a wittily contentious Lafayette and an airheaded, self-regarding Thomas Jefferson -- although the latter characterization is one of Hamilton's few errors; love him or hate him, Jefferson was a far more consequential figure than portrayed here. In a notable bit of luxury casting, Brian d'Arcy James is an amusingly jaded, overdressed King George III, offering cynical commentary from the sidelines. His number "You'll Be Back," written in a '60s-era Britpop style, treats the revolution as little more than a bad breakup, with George casting himself as an ever-tolerant boyfriend.

Miranda's through-composed score is so rich that one hearing isn't enough to do it justice, but it starts off powerfully with "Alexander Hamilton," which asks the question "How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a/Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten/Spot in the Caribbean by Providence, impoverished, in squalor/Grow up to be a hero and a scholar?" Other highlights include "Helpless," which parses the complex relationships of Hamilton, Eliza, and Angelica; the gutsy battle sequence "Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down);" "What'd I Miss," delivered by Jefferson as he swans in from Paris, where he avoided the war; "The Room Where It Happens," in which Burr confesses his desire, at all costs, to be a power player; "The Reynolds Pamphlet," as Hamilton bares the details of his adultery in order to clear himself of charges of political corruption; "Burn," in which Eliza, destroying her correspondence, angrily chooses to erase herself from history; and "The World Was Wide Enough," which lays bare the ironies at the heart of that terrible duel.

Kail has also obtained first-rate work from his designers. David Korins' set, a two-level wooden structure with movable staircases and a central turntable, is extremely helpful at maintaining a headlong pace. Howell Binkley's protean lighting blends heavily sculpted white-light looks with sequences of deeply saturated color; at times, he cracks open a kaleidoscope, scattering complex circular patterns that mesh beautifully with Korins' turntable and with the complex movement sequences devised by the choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler. This is one of those rare musical productions where all the elements come together to create a single unified style. Paul Tazewell's period costumes -- he makes especially inventive use of foundation garments for the chorus -- and Charles LaPointe's wig and hair designs add a welcome note of period authenticity. It is absolutely imperative that Miranda's lyrics be understood, and Nevin Steinberg's sound design is a model of clarity.

"Who lives? Who dies? Who tells your story?" These words, heard near the end of Hamilton, are likely to echo in your head for some time. Hamilton, by virtue of his early death, cuts the most elusive figure among the founding fathers. (Eliza devoted the rest of her life to defending his reputation.) Two centuries later, he is lucky to have his story reclaimed by Miranda, who, in a single stroke, reframes it as a vital message for contemporary audiences and simultaneously points the musical theatre in a fresh and original direction. We are due to get close to a dozen new musicals before the season ends. If one of them comes close to the achievement of Hamilton, I will be stunned.--David Barbour