Dear Kay,
I humbly present a very special Lazy Sunday.
I have had a thing for Alexander Hamilton since at least 2004. (See “Boo Freakin’ Hoo.”) You and I even paid a visit to the Alexander Hamilton Memorial Service Plaza on the New Jersey Turnpike.
Remember this? 2006!
Well, last week in New York, all my Hamiltonian dreams came true when we saw the musical Hamilton. In Broadway’s knockout hip-hopera, the Founding Fathers are not white, the soldiers are often women, and all the ironies of our country’s birth are laid full out. It is wildly entertaining.
Once you see a show of this originality, Hamilton fever is inevitable. You want to know all about it.
Lin-Manuel Miranda is the shining star who also wrote the whole damn show. (Yes, he got his MacArthur genius grant in September.) The first glimpse of what he was up to was at a White House event in 2009. As Jon Stewart said to President Obama, years later, “So he workshopped it at the White House?”
Adam Gopnik admits his own Hamilton fever in The New Yorker: “It’s even better than the praise implies: funny, moving, touching, original in its adaptation of hip-hop prosody, and with a much larger emotional spectrum of sounds and feelings than the elevator pitch—a hip-hop musical about the birth of America—suggests.”
Adam Green talks with Miranda in Vogue, where Annie Leibovitz’s photographs capture the beauty of this cast. Green writes, “Miranda was more than just a Broadway nerd. He was also a salsa nerd and a hip-hop nerd, obsessing over Rubén Blades and Juan Luis Guerra and parsing the rhymes of A Tribe Called Quest and Wu-Tang Clan. Even now, he’s equally fluent quoting the late rapper Big Pun (‘Dead in the middle of Little Italy little did we know that we riddled some middlemen who didn’t do diddly’) and Sondheim ( ‘While her withers wither with her’). ‘I do live at the center of this very weird Venn diagram,’ Miranda concedes.”
If you want a taste of what everybody’s howling about, scroll down the Hamilton website for videos.
This mini-documentary follows the actors on opening night.
Rosie O’Donnell has seen it 12 times and can rap to prove it.
There’s a documentary about the show coming, and a film version, and a book. It will be around as long as there are actors who can simultaneously rap, dance, and make you cry, so when it comes your way, do not miss it.
So: Monday, February 15, I’ll be watching the Grammys, waiting for the live performance by the cast of Hamilton. And June 12, the Tonys. Wait for it . . .
Love,
Ann
I cannot begin to tell you how obsessed I am…
This show so far exceeds the hype — just amazing!
But wait, aren’t the Tonys not for several months?
Ay yi yi! FIXED. You are right! June 12! Thank you for MAKING ME WAIT FOUR MORE MONTHS. ; )
I got VERY excited and went to program my Tivo to record next weekend and then — DESPAIR! So at least we’re both disappointed? 🙂
But the cast will be performing for the Grammys next week!
THAT’S what I was thinking of!!!! Thank you all. Obviously we need to group-knit this event . . .
I, too, am so jealous – I really want to see Hamilton! And a virtual group-knit is a great idea – I will no doubt still be banging out my Stopover! #bangtheknitslowly
@ Amanda — that’s right! Hooray!!
What a prescient post you wrote in 2004!
I’M SO JEALOUS!!!
Me too!
I do think a group knit for the Tony’s is in order.
Fell down the rabbit hole; love this! Thanks for sharing, it is now on my lesson plan for my Eng10 and 11 classes. My selling point, as English is rarely a favorite subject of low performing teens, is that the written and spoken word is the most important tool we have with which to change the world. This will definitely resonate with my students as I teach at a high poverty high school.
I am a total theatre nerd (it’s my undergraduate degree). Still, I was all, “…really?” Hip-hop and rap are so not my thing. But after seeing Lin-Manuel Miranda on The Tonight Show I finally went to Spotify and gave it a listen. Next thing I know, I’ve downloaded the album (and sent the CD to my mom) and I’m listening to it twice through every day at work. And following tumblrs (I’m too old for tumblr). And reading LMM’s Twitter feed every day (I don’t care for Twitter). The book is sitting in my Amazon cart until I can justify pre-ordering. Just hope I can someday see it…guess I just have to wait for it.
I want to see this show so badly, it hurts!
It’s probably not in the cards for my next quick trip to NYC, but I have a feeling some of my yarn budget will be diverted to multiple viewings when it sits down here in Chicago!
People are waiting 9 months to get into see Hamilton, so that’s a good thing!
Wow. Thank you so much for showing this. I just *must* find a way to see this show!
THIS is my lazy Sunday gig for weeks now: listening to the cast recording. Amazon Prime has this x-ray thing like karaoke with the lyrics for some songs. I finally ordered the CDs as well so I can listen in the car, but these videos may prompt me to finally try for tix for the fall.
Another fun onset of videos for folks to check out is from the recent Broadway Con, including one where the audience in a Hamilfans meet-up sings along with the cast …
We saw it on the 28th (one of Daveed Diggs’ last performances), and it changed my life.
Can’t wait to see BOTH.
WOW! WOW! WOW!
Thanks for putting this on my radar, Ann.
What rock have I been living under?! This is all kinds of awesome. I just shouted to my political science professor husband, “there’s a musical that combines both of our loves: revolutionary history and hip hop!” Thank you for the videos. I couldn’t be more excited that Atlanta is one of its stops on its 2017-2018 tour. Might not be able to wait that long!
We live in the Los Angeles area, and I keep looking out for it, because our friends in NY said it was amazing. And I read somewhere that Alan Rickman went to see it in December– recommendation enough for me! 🙂
My daughter is a struggling actress in NYC and talks about Hamilton all the time. She finally got to see it and had to stand through the whole thing. I don’t dare to tell her that all her exhortations to listen to the music, etc. that I ignored gave way to similar praise on a knitting blog that led me to actually watch the You Tube. I am now going to ITunes to buy the music. Good thing she doesn’t knit and it is highly unlikely she will read this blog post.
One day while shopping for fabrics in the garment district, I bumped into an assistant to the costume designer of Hamilton. She taught me a great method for gathering and tracking fabric samples (manilla tags, tiny stapler, binder rings). Her goal that day was to find “ivory white” cottons for the shirts/blouses in the show. Just the right ivories. Then, she shared with me some costume drawings that they were in the process of fabricating. It was thrilling.
We’ve yet to score tickets. Someday, I hope.
SO hoping I get to see this live someday!
For those who aren’t averse to nerding out on the history *and* historiography of Hamilton, I found this a really thought-provoking read:
http://www.vox.com/2015/11/27/9771784/hamilton-cabinet-battle-debt
I think it’s a testament to the genius of the show that it gives us so much to enjoy and so much to think about, whether in nerd-mode or fan-mode.
Oh my! My daughter is obsessed. She caused my other daughter to be obsessed. Not wanting to be left out, I started listening to the soundtrack. You know when you hear it in your mind while you are supposed to be sleeping that you have a problem. (At least I am not hearing “The Last Five Years”) My daughter announced she would like a season pass to the Chicago theater because they will be the only ones to get Hamilton tickets. Until I can see it I will settle for reading Chernow’s book which I just finished a few hours ago .
have been following hamilton-fever on a couple of friends’ feeds, and it sounds just bloody brilliant. Thanks for the links, it sounds lovely and complex and inspiring. and thank you, ann, for the link to your 2004 (!!!) blog post. i am still proudly and a little wistfully welling up at times appropriate-and-in. and completely un-apologetic about it. glad to still be able to read this blog, travel vicariously, and listen in on craftychatter. love from the Eastern Townships of QC…..