How does a 10-year-running Broadway sold out seater… grow up to be a movie in a theater?

His name is Alexander Hamilton, and his Frankenstein is Lin-Manuel Miranda. The famous lyrical scientist brought the 10-dollar founding father’s story back to life with unorthodox modern elements, including a score full of hip-hop and a cast of primarily non-white actors. The show swept at the 2016 Tony Awards with 11 wins out of 16 nominations. In 2020, it transitioned from stage to screen, gracing our Disney+ accounts amidst COVID-19 quarantine.

Now, five years later, Hamilton is making its movie theater debut on Sept. 5 and showing screenings for one blissful week.

My first encounter with Hamilton was in the backseat of my sister’s 1993 Toyota Camry on the way home from theater rehearsal. She was a high school senior, and I was a freshman. Her friend rode shotgun and insisted that she play a new musical for us through the car speakers. I remember thinking, “Being older is so cool. They can drive, they play the leads in the school show, and they know about fantastic new music like this.” The beat and the words were infectious. I listened to it all the time, learning every word.

After years of loving the soundtrack, I joined everyone in watching the professional recording on Disney+. Last summer, I had the privilege of seeing the show live for the first time on Broadway. I cried several times, most surprisingly during “The Schuyler Sisters.” Hearing those talented women vocalize, “History is happening in Manhattan and we just happen to be in the greatest city in the world,” while actively in Manhattan, New York, was an experience I’ll never forget. Some would say, I got to be in the room where it happens.

Another unforgettable element of my NYC viewing was witnessing a different actor play Hamilton. I understand that the project was Miranda’s creative baby, but he doesn’t exactly embody the womanizer the script conveys. Watching the charmingly handsome Trey Curtis grace the stage of the Richard Rodgers Theatre (and cheesing bashfully next to him at the stage door) brought the character to a whole new light. 

Still, his personality remained similar to Miranda’s original vision of an eager Chatty Cathy. Miranda can clearly relate to Hamilton’s character, writing screenplays and scores like he’s running out of time. You can hear his signature rhythm in In The Heights (2021), Encanto (2021), and three original songs in The Little Mermaid (2023). He’s just non-stop.

Dear reader, there’s a million lyrical references I haven’t done… just you wait.

What does Hamilton have in common with all of my favorite stories? It’s reliable with the ladies. Some argue that the title was left ambiguous as more of an ode to Alexander’s wife, Eliza (Phillipa Soo), who concludes the show with a moving epilogue addressing who lives, who dies, and who tells our story. Her sister Angelica (Renée Elise Goldsberry) completes their devastating love triangle, exchanging letters with Alexander but ultimately remaining loyal to Eliza. Her electric song “Satisfied” is among the themes that recur throughout the score in different contexts, such as the oscillating, instantly recognizable notes to “Alexander Hamilton,” or, my favorite number in the whole show, Aaron Burr’s (Leslie Odom Jr.) “Wait for It.”

Burr is tortured by his constant self-comparison to Hamilton. Where Burr waits to see which way the wind will blow, Hamilton takes a stand with pride. As is spoiled in the song’s opening number (and the history books, if you remember them), Burr will eventually be the one to take Hamilton’s life. After doing so, he has the realization that “the world was wide enough for both Hamilton and me.” In a Tonys red carpet interview with CBS Mornings, Okieriete Onaodowan (Hercules Mulligan and James Madison in the original Broadway cast) shared that this was his favorite lyric from Hamilton.

 “I think there’s a lot of conflict in the world because people don’t believe there’s enough space for everybody,” Onaodowan said. “So, it’s a little line that speaks volumes to a sentiment that can create a lot of harmony—there is space, literally, for everybody. Everyone’s literally fighting over space sometimes. The world is wide enough for every person to feel, and do, and believe whatever.”

In what felt like a nod to the corruption we’re witnessing in the current dismal political climate, the original cast wore all black for their ten-year Tonys reunion performance this past June. King George (Jonathan Groff) donned the only pop of color: blood red. The final lighting backdrop looked eerily like the White House, with the lyrics “History has its eyes on you” sung like a warning. Great art is political. Even on a more campy level, I huffed a dark laugh at seeing Miranda guest star on Saturday Night Live in the “Founding Fathers Cold Open,” rapping, “In America, we will never have a king—” only to have a Trump caricature (James Austin Johnson) stroll on, saying, “Never say never!”

Although the Tonys’ medley was a smash hit, a previously planned 2026 Kennedy Center performance has been canceled in response to Trump purging the art center’s board and installing himself as chairman. In NPR’s breakdown, they share that the president’s overhaul was in response to the center hosting a handful of drag performances. The article also describes the Kennedy Center’s historic bipartisanship, maintaining a balance of Democrats and Republicans on its board with the goal of broadly expanding arts education.

Miranda knew the show’s destiny as a political lightning rod. In 2020, he told USA Today, “It’s always going to have something to say. If I had any insight in the writing of this thing, it was everything that was present at the founding is still present: the sins of it, the paradoxes of it, the ways in which we fall short of the ideal ‘All men are created equal,’ the moment we wrote it down.”

Watching the show again with each passing year proves the accuracy of his insight.

My dad saw the show live in Chicago a few years ago. He despises musical theater, but my mom is an avid fan, so he went with her. I asked him recently if he remembered anything from the show.

“I don’t remember much,” he told me, “What I do know, though, is somebody was not letting that shot get thrown away.” Dad, your quotes always blow us all away.

Reflection Courtesy of Risa Bolash

Image Courtesy of Joan Marcus