NEW YORK 鈥 Lightning can strike twice in the same place, but if we鈥檙e talking musical theatre lightning, the two occurrences might be forty years apart.
Decades ago, on an early summer Friday in 1975, I sat in the Newman Theatre at the Public Theatre complex on Lafayette Street in Manhattan and cheered one of the first performances of A Chorus Line, that Michael Bennett juggernaut which remade the history of song and dance on stage in so many different ways.
Just recently, on a late winter Sunday in 2015, I found myself in the same venue, witnessing a new kind of theatrical revolution take place as Lin-Manuel Miranda鈥檚 Hamilton blew across the same stage with the force of a benevolent hurricane, sweeping aside the debris of the past so that a brave new world could step downstage and take its bow.
What makes Hamilton so special? If I called it 鈥渁 hip-hop musical about one of America鈥檚 Founding Fathers,鈥 I鈥檇 only be telling part of the story.
Yes, it uses very contemporary music to tell its story, but other shows (like Hair and Rent and Spring Awakening) have done that before. Yes, it captures the rhythms of rap in its rhyming dialogue, but playwrights as far back as Shakespeare have employed rhyming couplets as a narrative device.
And it鈥檚 true that the staging of director Thomas Kail and choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler reaches new heights of breathtaking fluidity, but to achieve that peak, they鈥檙e standing on the shoulders of previous giants like Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse and, of course, Bennett.
What makes Hamilton different, special, something for the history books, is that it pulls off a unique juggling act which I can鈥檛 recall any other show quite capturing in my lifetime: it uses the present to illuminate the past, while looking forward to the future.
Before our eyes, Alexander Hamilton leaps off the ten-dollar bill and the dusty back pages of history books to become the ideal political hero of our era: a bastard child, born in the Caribbean, who rises to the top by brains, tenacity and a masterful sense of how to exploit any situation.
But unlike the plaster saints of many such sagas, we also meet a man whose greatness contains the seeds of his own destruction: a self-entitled ego worthy of Obama, an obliviousness to his enemies reminiscent of Bush and a weakness for the ladies that links him forever with Clinton.
In fact, Bill and Hillary saw the show the same evening I was at the matinee and one can only wonder what they made of witnessing a version of their own past troubles on the stage.
Still there鈥檚 a breeziness to the show at its best that makes it soar. 鈥淚mmigrants, we get the job done!鈥 exult Lafayette and Hamilton as they high-five each other in success and 鈥淏ecause I鈥檓 the president,鈥 is Jefferson鈥檚 pithy reason for banning his rival Burr from further power.
Color-blind casting is one of those terms that people use without ever really exploring what it really means, but Hamilton redefines it. All of its central political characters were white men in historical fact, but on the stage, they鈥檙e black and Hispanic.
And in a truly inspired touch, the three Schuyler women whose lives impact Hamilton鈥檚 in many ways are played by Asian, black and Hispanic actresses.
The whole cast is worthy of praise, but special mention must go to Miranda鈥檚 own energetic take on Hamilton, Leslie Odom Jr.鈥檚 seething turn on Aaron Burr, the hilarious double of Daveed Diggs as Lafayette/Jefferson and Ren茅e Elise Goldsberry as the smouldering Angelica Schuyler. Brian D鈥橝rcy James, who made King George III a hilariously show-stopping villain, is no longer with the show, but one suspects his successor, the talented Jonathan Groff, is bringing much to the role.
Brilliant though it is, the show is still about 15 minutes too long, running very close to three hours. And the structural problem that plagues it is that the triumphant victory of the American Revolution comes two-thirds of the way through Act I and the stretch following it until intermission naturally seems a bit anticlimactic.
Act II however, is nearly perfect, keeping the energy and wit of the first half while adding depth and heartbreak to the mix. It鈥檚 the rare show that moves you to laughter, tears and cheers, all in the course of one performance
Hamilton鈥檚 run this spring at The Public Theatre is totally sold out (with scalpers getting a rumoured $1,200 a pair for tickets) but it鈥檚 moving to Broadway this summer, where anyone who cares about musical theatre owes it to themselves to see it.
And if the ghost of Michael Bennett still haunts the Newman Theatre, as some people say he does, I鈥檇 like to think that these days he鈥檚 smiling.
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