Chicago Theater Review: HAMILTON (PrivateBank Theatre)

OUR FUNKY FOUNDING FATHERS

A hip-hop Alexander Hamilton? A beat-box Father of His Country? A jumping James Madison and a jiveass Jefferson who disses bigtime in a poetry slam? The ten-dollar bill will never be the same (or the dollar note for that matter). A sassy-spunky 2015 blast from the past set to irresistible rhythms, Hamilton is a wildly successful revamp (or reclamation) by Lin-Manuel Miranda (creator of In The Heights). It feels as revolutionary as the war it covers and as bold as the new nation it celebrates.

A money maker about the credit-worthy man who made our money (our first treasury secretary, co-author of The Federalist Papers, and deal-maker for a strong government and centralized economy), Hamilton is indefinitely invincible in this “second coming” at Chicago’s PrivateBank Theatre. (Hamilton himself would have loved the name of the venue.) It’s also an election-year artistic refutation: Miranda salutes a very different New Yorker from 2016’s orange fascist–an orphan immigrant bastard, a financial phenom cut short by rival and nemesis Aaron Burr. As history becomes his story, it’s enough to make America sing again.

Rapping and rampaging in set designer David Korins’s big barn with wooden walkways and revolving stage, all but dancing to Howell Binkley’s wizard lighting, Miranda’s makeover finds its heartbeat in “(I’m Not Going to Lose) My Shot” (darkly ironic, considering his demise). This is Hamilton’s declaration of independence as a hopeful, hungry seeker of newly minted glory, driven by a destiny he carves himself. Everything old is new again as we learn “who lives, who dies, who tells your story.”

Miguel Cervantes tackles the title role with combustible ambition, climbing notes and surmounting obstacles from 1776 to 1800. Along Miranda’s “green brick road” we meet Hamilton’s true if tried helpmate Eliza (lovely Ari Afsar), his surrogate dad George Washington (Jonathan Kirkland), his ally Madison (Wallace Smith), his opportunistic foil Burr (Joshua Henry), and his ideological foe Thomas Jefferson (Chris De’Sean Lee). (John Adams, who HBO covered well enough, does not appear.) Keeping it huge as well as real, Miranda includes a sardonically clueless George III (Alexander Gemignani), a stalwart Marquis de Lafayette (Lee), Hamilton’s equally doomed teenage son Phillip (José Ramos), and Angelica Schuyler (Karen Olivo), Hamilton’s sustaining Muse and sister-in-law.

Drawing from Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography, the action contrasts private and public happenings to show how, more than politics, history is local. Hamilton seems as much the subtle strategist who became G.W.’s “right hand man” as the skilled suitor to the Schuyler sisters, as much a comer (“History Has Its Eyes on You”) as a marked man (“The World Was Wide Enough”).

Radiating pluck and luck, opposing Northern interests to Southern subversion, Cervantes’ Hamilton is a dogged campaigner, whether negotiating affaires d’honneur (“Ten Duel Commandments”); intriguing for advantage (“Cabinet Battle”); forging a difference (“The Room Where It Happens”); admitting to bribing an irate husband to cover an adulterous affair (“The Reynolds Pamphlet”); or simply settling for some short serenity (“That Would Be Enough”). Paralleling the ardor of his once and future victim with his own aching aspirations, Mr. Henry’s Burr (“Wait for It”), himself an orphan, fits Hamilton as Javert does Jean Valjean. Afsar incarnates heartbreak in Eliza’s pop anthem “Burn.” No Madame Tussaud’s waxworks, the ensemble is game for fame.

You can fault Miranda’s fascination with a flawed hero: No bronze statue in the making, Hamilton was not opposed to slavery. A closet elitist, he was no pal to democracy, despising the mob and cultivating fellow plutocrats. It’s strange that Hamilton was decisive in making his arch adversary Thomas Jefferson our third president: Miranda’s ire at the adulterous slave owner stops him from acknowledging the populist fervor of a virtuous Virginian. (It’s interesting how quickly American revolutionaries could repudiate, a dozen years later, their contribution to the French sequel.)

But, pulsating to Andy Klankenbuehler’s kinetic choreography, Broadway in Chicago’s Hamilton is a “non-stop” Pulitzer and Tony-winning musical, not a political testament. A nearly three-hour amusement ride, this is America as seen from the future, not projected from the past. Thomas Kail’s faithful staging squeezes the juices from Miranda’s R&B magic-making. When it’s not S.R.O., there will be dancing in the aisles. It’s impossible not to be caught up in the sheer anti-boredom of it all, thrill-making 21st-century theatricality to rechristen the republic.

photos by Joan Marcus

Hamilton
PrivateBank Theatre, 18 West Monroe Street
Tues-Fri at 7:30; Sat at 8;
Wed at 1:30; Sat & Sun at 2
tickets on sale through September, 2017
for tickets, call 800.775.2000
or visit Broadway in Chicago

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