A scene from a previous stop on the national tour of "Hamilton" (Photos by Joan Marcus courtesy Broadway in Richmond)
The massive mixture of entertainment and history that is “Hamilton” is running at the Altria Theater through Dec. 8. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony-, Grammy- and Pulitzer Prize-winning, rapping, singing, dancing tribute to the “$10 dollar founding father,” Alexander Hamilton, is an astounding piece of theater. If you want straight history, go read some books or at least this preview. Otherwise, enjoy the show.
One of the stars of the production is the scenic design of David Korins. The background of rough brick, the balcony structure and modular staircases resemble the backstage of an old theater, and, true to the ghosts of a playhouse, this story comes to life when the lights go out. This is a history play, thus you are essentially watching the energetic performances of embodied memories or legend. The passage of the 18th to the early 19th centuries is reflected in the costumes and fashion changes through the designs of Paul Tazewell.
The show blasts out from its brief biographical introduction and doesn’t dawdle through its almost three-hour (with intermission) run time. The show covers revolutionary ideas, war, peace, love, sibling rivalry, the values of friendship, betrayal, birth and death. The drafting of the U.S. Constitution and the vociferous debates about forming the U.S. Treasury system are in there, too.
The story follows the parallel professional and personal tracks and fatal transits of the immigrant orphan Hamilton and Aaron Burr, who was also an orphan. Both men are brilliant and industrious, aggressive and opportunistic, complicated — and they could be cads. They both soldiered in the Continental Army during the Revolution. They made devoted friends and vehement enemies, and, while Burr and Hamilton were often political rivals, they maintained a respectful relationship. And then one killed the other.
The ensemble cast gives a walloping performance.
(From left) Julia K. Harriman, Sabrina Sloan and Isa Briones played the Schuyler sisters in a previous stop on the national tour of "Hamilton."
The powerful central muses of the show are the Schuyler sisters, Angelica (Stephanie Umoh), Eliza (Zoe Jensen) and Peggy (Olivia Puckett), who as a character vanishes (she was also the shortest-lived sister), and Puckett transforms into the seductive Maria Reynolds. Angelica and Eliza are both lost in Hamilton’s eyes, but one is wedded to him, and loyalty — between sisters and in marriage — is but one of the layered complications in the story.
Edred Utomi as Hamilton is by turns brash and nuanced. Josh Tower’s Burr is suitably larger than life but sympathetic. Paul Oakley Stovall (also a playwright) towers as George Washington but presents the man at the locus of history also dealing with the squabbles of his military staff. Bryson Bruce delivers as the sardonic and intriguing Jefferson and the irrepressible Marquis de Lafayette. Tyler Belo is double cast as the boisterous black spy Hercules Mulligan and the more restrained James Madison.
Bryson Bruce (center) plays Thomas Jefferson in the national tour of "Hamilton."
Prepare to be amused by campy King George III, whose crown is worn by Peter Matthew Smith. The Altria audience gave him a warm response. Though comic relief, Smith provides a ditzy allure to the royal, but in his final song, “I Know Him,” describes the king’s astonishment that, instead of retaining office, Washington is going home. The lyrics, “Oceans rise/Empires fall/Next to Washington, they all look small/All alone/Watch them run/They will tear each other to pieces” have resonance forward to our time, but reflect back to the the United States’ civil conflicts, where we’ve proved ourselves quite capable of ripping each other apart in the most gruesome manner.
If in “Hamilton” there is any lesson, it is that in our national DNA there is baked political discord and division. That’s how we started. How it’ll end, well, as King George asks after the British surrender at Yorktown and “The World Turned Upside Down,” “What’s next?”
If you’ve not yet purchased tickets to “Hamilton,” two days prior to each performance, a digital lottery offers admission to 40 persons at $10. Otherwise, tickets start at $99.
