Sarah on theater

Party people in the place to be: you are now in the midst of a real MC. 😉 Welcome back, Leslie. Perhaps no show in recent memory has been more unfairly maligned by its original cast recordings than “Hamilton,” which continues to burn bright at the Rodgers on 46th St—a cultural supernova observed from ten light-years across the sociopolitical galaxy.

Now featuring its umpteenth cast, the show remains a fixture at the top of the weekly grosses. But the orthodox opinion among the cognoscenti has been, for a hot minute, that this iteration of the show isn’t “worth it”: it’s too expensive, too heavily touristed, and, most egregious of all, the current cast simply isn’t up to the standard set by the original cast proshot on Disney+. For dedicated theatergoers, “Hamilton” has taken its place alongside other middle-aged shows like “Wicked” and “Book of Mormon,” somewhere between a modern classic and a bit passé.

That kind of perception is inevitable to some degree. Broadway shows are typically “frozen” after opening night; most creative elements of the show don’t change after that to avoid running up a bunch of extra costs, and, when they’re eventually needed, most shows choose minimally disruptive replacement performers to keep things on ice. This is generally true even down to the details—you can still readily identify, for example, which ensemble member is on Ariana DeBose’s old track. (Ashley Merritt at this performance.) The “Hamilton” you see today is still very much the same show that premiered in 2015 to so much acclaim and made stars out of everyone involved, but these days, it’s a Ship of Theseus of less recognizable performers that’s marketed to an audience more interested in the show itself than any particular star.

So it’s equal parts “theatrical event” and “interesting experiment” to insert Leslie Odom, Jr.—who earned a Tony for Best Actor for his breakout performance—back into the role of Aaron Burr for the tenth anniversary. You could cynically note that this is an opportunity to extort $1600 for seats to a ten-year-old show, and, gosh, you would be right (although I got the center of the 7th row for about a fourth of that before the price jump, which is still too expensive). More generously, this is an unprecedented chance, particularly for those of us who weren’t in New York in 2015, to look twice at an illusion of the original oasis—to see the best-available staged version of a very good show for the foreseeable future and have a unique, latter-day opportunity to re-evaluate it.

Four paragraphs of lead-in is plenty. Is it good? Yep! It’s great. Does Odom still have it? Absolutely, and it’s a super fun throwback to see him up there. Does he show these wack MCs how it’s done? Not necessarily! I think it would be fairer to describe him as first among equals. A smooth operator operating correctly. Keep in mind that he’s chasing his own ghost, too—age comes for everyone, in time, and he performs Burr with less vigor (and perhaps more gravitas) than he used to. He doesn’t phone it in, and he certainly could if he wanted to, given how the crowd goes berserk at the mere sight of him.

In a way, Odom suffers from the same problem as everyone else. People just know these songs so, so well from the proshot and the cast album, and if you glance around, you’ll see them mouthing along, even at the hard parts! (Including me, on one or two songs, I admit. You probably don’t need to hear me rap “Guns & Ships,” but if that was something you wanted…) This invites an impossible comparison—those recordings were constructed from multiple takes, and live theater is inherently ephemeral and imperfect. What plugging Odom back in does fix is the ineffable ick of the “cover artist.” There’s a certain authenticity yielded by having the original guy back, even if that doesn’t necessarily make sense in musical theater, since he’s playing a role. But stay with me for a second longer—I would propose that “Hamilton,” a rapped-through musical, is uniquely susceptible to this problem.

It’s very uncommon to hear a direct cover in hip hop. Although it significantly understates the prevalence of ghostwriting, rap lyrics are often written from a very personal perspective about life experiences real or embellished. And a major differentiator between rappers is “flow,” or rhythmic relationship to the beat. Even if you can’t describe this, your ears know what it is—Snoop Dogg, for example, has this instantly-recognizable lackadaisical syncopation to the way he delivers lines that tells you exactly who’s on the verse and associates it with his memorable established persona. These concepts are such essential identifiers for rappers that an outright cover is inappropriate—it’s simply not done—but far more common is quoting, interpolating, or sampling an individual line as homage to an influence.

Lin-Manuel Miranda understands this well, and it’s written very deeply into the bones of “Hamilton.” For starters, the show employs that homage technique with direct references to Mobb Deep, Fugees, Notorious B.I.G., and other hip hop luminaries, serving a dual purpose of celebrating and establishing credibility with that community. But more importantly, these tools are deployed in service of characterization—essential in this show that covers so much historical ground at breakneck speed. Consider the doubled parts of Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson, played by the same actor but impossible to confuse for each other—how does that work? It’s exactly the same thing that Snoop Dogg is doing: they establish memorable personas early (A boastful “Je m’appelle Lafayette, the Lancelot of the revolutionary set”; Jefferson turns up after the war with an insufferably-smug head bob and “What did I miss?”) and remind you of those personas over and over with consistent, distinct lyricism and flow.

The intersection of rap characterization and practical Broadway casting realities is the fundamental challenge for modern “Hamilton.” When the lyrics are fixed, the flow belongs to a stage character, and the performers are cast to frozen type and timbre, it strips practically all of the individuality from rap performance. It almost doesn’t matter how proficient or interesting the replacements are, beyond whether they can get all the words out—the tools that a rapper would use to assert their individuality beyond that are simply not available. They’re more or less consigned to facsimile.

That the cast album and proshot of the stellar original cast are so widely disseminated is the icing on the cake. For example, Marc delaCruz played a fine Lafayette/Jefferson at this performance—usually considered the show’s most demanding part, from a rap perspective—but the show doesn’t let him be anything other than an echo of high-energy Daveed Diggs, and those are especially big shoes to fill. Quote Talib Kweli: “[Diggs], as soon he came onstage and did a couple of bars, I was like, ‘That’s an MC. That’s not a traditional Broadway dude. That’s a guy who raps and was put in this play because he raps.’” Good luck plucking another one of those from a genre that values originality so highly.

This is why it’s cool to see Leslie Odom, Jr. return to the role of Aaron Burr. He almost certainly isn’t the most proficient rapper to ever play the part, and he can’t match his own composite performance from ten years ago, but that slightly unhinged delight and arrogant smirk that he brought to the role are still completely intact and feel so right for Burr.

Cooler still, though, might be the implicit co-sign his presence gives his castmates, like a legendary MC descending from on high to lay down a verse. It turns out that “Hamilton” is still alive and well and capable of forging brilliant on-stage partnerships. It’s a reality check on misplaced expectations to see Odom revolve around Trey Curtis, the current Alexander Hamilton, who absolutely has the gravity and vocal dexterity to keep up—they form a new binary star that is (dare I say it?) every bit as compelling as the Miranda/Odom pairing of old.