This year, from September all through November, the theater company known as Broadway in Boston has been putting on their performance of Hamilton, a musical made by Lin Manuel Miranda about the Revolutionary War with the star character of the show being Alexander Hamilton. Along with several other theater companies in the country, the show is performed in celebration of Hamilton’s 10-year anniversary and, although the cast here in Boston isn’t the same as from the original Broadway production, they still have been putting on an outstanding performance of the show at the Citizens Opera House.
My Observations
I’ve been quite a theater nerd since middle school, and Hamilton was one of the first few shows I’ve ever seen. When I found out that my aunt was going to take me to see it in person this year, I was so excited! I feel like some people out there would probably think that the performance wasn’t the same since it wasn’t the same cast from Broadway, but I personally wasn’t too worried considering the popularity of the theater company that performed in Boston and the fact that I’ve seen other shows from this same company before, one of my personal favorites being Shucked, a comedy musical about a girl traveling to find out why all the corn in her hometown is dying.
The set on stage looked just like the set from the original show, and the cast did an amazing job, and quite a few of the actors who were casted sounded very similar to the original actors for their characters, some of those actors being Christian Magby who played Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson, Marja Harmon who played Angelica Schuyler, and Lauren Mariasoosay who played Eliza Schuyler. Overall, the whole show was a blast and Tyler Fauntleroy really embraced his role as the star in the show, Alexander Hamilton. They had the spinning platforms built into the stage, and I was truly immersed in the experience.
A Modern-Day Revolution
The performance of Hamilton is for its 10-year anniversary, yes. However, it doesn’t seem to be a coincidence that a show about politics, revolution, and huge changes to the country is being performed during a time where the political climate in our country is chaos. Hamilton itself is reminder to us that we need to rise up when things get bad and, of course, not throw away our shot.
A quote from the song “Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)” in act 1 that got a lot of the audience in the theater cheering was, “Immigrants: We get the job done.” The quote applies very well to one of the biggest issues the nation is facing right now which is the mass deportations and cruel treatment of people from outside the country, whether they are U.S. citizens or not. Therefore, the performance of Hamilton is another way to bring this issue to the spotlight.
