The Tony Awards on Sunday night were a bonanza for Hamilton, as Broadway’s wildly popular hit musical collected an impressive 11 prizes, including the coveted one for best musical. While the results reflected the widespread audience and critical acclaim for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop biography of Alexander Hamilton, they did not quite match the record 12 prizes bestowed on the musical The Producers in 2001.
(Washington Post, June 12, 2016)
I have not seen this musical, which I suspect is the case with most of you. Never mind that I’ve seen so many video clips that seeing it live at this point will seem anticlimactic.
I also feel obliged to mention that I stopped watching entertainment award shows years ago. To understand why, I refer you to “And the Oscar Goes To…,” February 29, 2016, and “My Review of The Oscars,” February 25, 2008.
That said, Hamilton is as big a cultural phenomenon as it is a Broadway hit. Whereas The Producers never resonated much beyond “The Great White Way” – its hilarious caricatures of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis notwithstanding.
For example, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew cited this hip-hop musical as the inspiration for reversing his decision to take Alexander Hamilton off the $10 bill. I commented on this in “Tubman, Truth, and MLK on Currency Is Fine. But What about Douglas? And Remember Geronimo?” April 25, 2016.
Not to mention that, even without seeing it, kids are probably learning more about early U.S. history from Hamilton than textbooks. Arguably, Hamilton’s hip-hop songs are doing for kids who don’t know much about history what Jesus Christ Superstar’s rock-and-roll songs did for kids who didn’t know much about religion.
The obvious reason for this is that it’s a lot easier for kids to learn lyrics in popular songs than dry facts in history books. And rap – with its rhythmic and rhyming style – is even more didactic in this respect.
Incidentally, you can be forgiven for having no clue that CBS aired the Tony Awards on Sunday night. After all, the rest of mainstream media and all of cable and social media were too busy providing hyena-like coverage of the terrorist slaughter in Orlando; so much so that you’d think the fate of Western civilization depended on their coverage.
In any case, you know hip-hop has come a long way, baby, when it breaks all box-office records and Broadway celebrates it with 11 Tonys.
For the second time since opening, Hamilton has dethroned The Lion King as the highest-grossing show on Broadway. It also anchored Broadway’s overall box office once again, delivering the biggest haul in history for the second week of a new year.
(Forbes, January 20, 2016)
Never before has a show enjoyed the trifecta of being popular, praiseworthy, and profitable in such spectacular fashion. And how American that it took a Hispanic actor/playwright adapting the work of a white historian, using a black music style, and leading a multiracial cast to accomplish this unprecedented feat.
Yet Hamilton’s most interesting impact might be the way it is allowing so many middle-aged white men to seem hip to their kids. After all, its rap songs give it such street cred that seeing Hamilton on Broadway is every bit as cool as seeing Kanye at the Garden.
Congratulations, Hamilton.
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