Furter, starred in the original West End and Broadway productions, and in the film. Later in the sixties, Anthony Newley collaborated on two musicals with Leslie Bricusse, Stop the World – I want to Get Off and The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd, and directed and starred in both on Broadway.įrom the seventies, and even to this day, there is really only one Riff Raff, and that is Rocky Horror Show composer/lyricist/librettist Richard O’Brien, who, alongside the iconic Tim Curry as Frank N. Even the show’s producer Lore Noto did a stint as The Boy’s Father, Hucklebee, but when it opened, librettist Tom Jones, under an assumed name, played the Old Actor, Henry. It first opened on May 3rd, 1960, and has boasted such performers as Jerry Orbach, Kristen Chenoweth, Liza Minelli, and Glenn Close. Not every musical features a performance by one of its own creators, in fact very few do.įirst off, off-Broadway’s reining champion, The Fantasticks. Miranda does it all, and fortunately for us as well as him, he’s quite good at it all. If audience members experience some déjà vu at performances of Hamilton, it’s probably because they were fortunate enough to witness Miranda performing in the central role of Usnavi in In the Heights, at the Richard Rogers Theatre, also a product of Miranda’s own creative juices (with a book by playwright Quiara Alegria Hudes). Hamilton features a book, music, and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda and stars Miranda as the title character, Alexander Hamilton. He spent his final years swimming against the democratic tide until his profound distrust of Burr’s politics and character led to their duel and Hamilton’s death in 1804.In just a few weeks, the musical Hamilton will begin previews at the Richard Rogers Theatre on Broadway. Two pamphlets that he wrote, one confessing to adultery to disprove speculation charges, the other attacking his own party’s candidate for president in 1800, irreparably damaged his political career. Voraciously ambitious and always sure that he was right, he sometimes pushed too far, said too much, and compromised too little-often in print he was involved in 10 near-duels before his fatal encounter with Aaron Burr. One of the nation’s earliest and most insistent advocates for a stronger national government, he aggressively promoted that agenda as the nation’s first secretary of the treasury. Arriving in New York in 1772 as a revolution was brewing, Hamilton was swept up in the furor, becoming an ardent pamphleteer, a soldier yearning for acts of derring-do, and ultimately, an aide-de-camp to Commander in Chief George Washington. Born poor and illegitimate in the West Indies and orphaned at a young age, he impressed locals with his intellectual talents, inspiring them to assemble a charitable fund to send him to North America for college. Hamilton’s story and character seem tailor-made for drama. His realpolitik qualms and fears dilute that message. Hamilton’s striving, hungry spirit is the play’s heart and soul it speaks to the present.
Hamilton smooths over such inconsistencies, and for good reason. The real Hamilton was a mass of contradictions: an immigrant who sometimes distrusted immigrants, a revolutionary who placed a supreme value on law and order, a man who distrusted the rumblings of the masses yet preached his politics to them more frequently and passionately than many of his more democracy-friendly fellows. He’s a complex character-though not as complex as his historical counterpart. Miranda’s version of Alexander Hamilton is also lovable-a product of the play’s humanizing focus on Hamilton’s vulnerabilities and ambitions. Deeply traditional in its praise of an American founder, yet radical in its reinvention of that founder as an immigrant in a multicultural, inclusive world whose lingua franca is rap, Hamilton embraces both poles in polarized times it is a play that everyone can love. With its inventiveness and energy, its witty meld of past and present, its catchy and moving music, and its skillful word craft, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway hit Hamilton is near irresistible.
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