The Miranda decision -- how to refresh 'Hamilton' for its tenth birthday
The Miranda decision -- how to refresh 'Hamilton' for its tenth birthday
Hamilton owned slaves? CTG's "32 Acres". Antaeus and Chalk use audio to dramatize LA neighborhoods. ICT's 'Closely Related Keys.'
“You’ll Be Back.”
That’s the title of the catchiest, karaoke-friendliest song in “Hamilton.” But I’ll guess that those words also went through the minds of almost everyone who was affected by the sudden postponement, in March 2020, of the second run of “Hamilton” at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood.
Disappointed ticket buyers were expecting “Hamilton” to “be back” after the COVID crisis passed. and those who were presenting or performing in the show assumed that audiences likewise would “be back” when theaters were again safe.
Of course COVID is still with us. But “Hamilton” is finally back at the Pantages — through January 2 — and so far the experience of seeing it there seems safe for the vaccinated and masked spectators.
COVID is hardly the only big change in the world since “Hamilton” first appeared at the Pantages, in 2017. Lately, whenever I hear the show’s King George sing the phrase “Oceans rise” in “You’ll be Back,” I briefly think of Ida and climate change.
However, let’s look at two post-2017 developments that are more specifically about Alexander Hamilton — and “Hamilton” itself .
First, new evidence indicates that Alexander Hamilton probably owned slaves, as outlined in articles in Smithsonian and the New York Times last November. He was involved in a group which advocated for owners to voluntarily free their slaves — but did he heed his own advice on that subject?
If Hamilton owned slaves, it dramatically undercuts his image, in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical, as the rappin’ debater who disses his Virginia rivals for relying on their slaves.
Is this necessarily a problem for “Hamilton”? No. In fact, Miranda and the “Hamilton” producers should see this as a splendid opportunity to revise and freshen “Hamilton” for a newer version that could be timed to appear, amid much publicity, to mark the show’s 10th birthday in 2025.
Although “Hamilton” thrust the original A. Hamilton several notches up the list of prominent founding fathers, Miranda didn’t depict a plaster saint. During the second half of the show, Hamilton’s betrayal of his marital vows creates a much more complex character. Why not add yet another layer of dramatic depth by including a slave character and a song in which the inner Hamilton reflects on his own behavior regarding his…staff?
No, this notion isn’t inspired by “critical race theory,” whatever that means to you. It’s inspired by historical research — and the primary research paper on the subject, by Jessie Serfilippi, was published by the Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site, which is a New York State Parks museum within the 1760s home of Hamilton’s father-in-law (a long-acknowledged slaveholder), in Albany.
Some have criticized the research, including one article in the New York Daily News that was written under the pseudonym “Philo Hamilton”. But a belief that Hamilton owned slaves goes back more than a century; Hamilton’s grandson Allan McLane Hamilton was one of the believers.
So let’s say the research holds up. Then let’s say that Miranda continues to demonstrate his wizardry with words while writing this new wrinkle into the show. These revelations would further enhance the production’s attitudes toward history — that it evolves, and that it excites.
I realize that “Hamilton” already covers a lot of territory. Something else might have to be cut. But the tenth anniversary will command more attention — and become an even hotter ticket — if it offers the extra value of a section that can’t be seen in the Disney+ “Hamilton” video.
This brings us to the second big post-2017 change about “Hamilton” itself — the success of that video.
Since last year, anyone who has the internet and a streaming device can spend $7.99 (the current monthly price in the US) and receive access to the Disney+ recording of the original Broadway production. It didn’t take long before reports appeared that the size of the video’s audience had surely surpassed the “Hamilton” attendance at all live productions in all brick-and-mortar theaters. The video is now the main street into “Hamilton”-land.
Of course as a theater columnist, I’m a partisan of the dramatic electricity generated by being in “the room where it happens,” with the actors. But it’s impossible not to admit that the close-up views of those actors, from many different angles, are remarkably better in the streamed “Hamilton” than they could possibly be from any one seat in any one theater, especially if that seat is too far back in that theater.
While watching the streaming version again in the past week, I also noticed that many of the show’s lyrics are much easier to understand in my living room, especially when I turn on the subtitles.
In a theater, some of the lyrics are usually drowned out not only by the speed of their delivery but also by loud exclamations or applause of exuberant fans. But the subtitles help guide the viewer through the fastest lines, and the video’s sound designers eliminated most of those distractions from audience members. I didn’t appreciate many of Miranda’s lyrics sufficiently until I could read them while also watching the actors sing or speak them.
I also relished Miranda’s performance as Hamilton in the video. I hadn’t seen it live, on Broadway. It’s a hard act to follow. The younger Jamael Westman, the current Hamilton at the Pantages, isn’t much of a match. Part of his problem is something he can’t control — Westman is a strapping 6-feet-4-inches tall. He usually towers over most of the other actors — which seems inappropriate for a character whose domination stems from his intelligence and wit, not his physique (Miranda is 5-feet-9, Hamilton was 5-feet-7).
Anyone who can afford to see “Hamilton” live in a theater should do so, at least once. Overall, the current production at the Pantages is in great shape, fully honoring the show’s irresistibly propulsive pulse. But seeing “Hamilton” live should be supplemented by watching the video, preferably with those subtitles.
By the way, I was asked to display my vaccination card on my way into the Pantages — although LA Times critic Charles McNulty reported that he was not. Everyone in the audience is required to be masked, but McNulty noticed a few people who weren’t. The management assures website visitors that the venue has “enhanced air filtration utilizing MERV 13 filters and maximizing outside air.”
At the performance I attended, most audience members were masked. But there is no organized social distancing. Although the seats immediately to the left and right of my party of two were, surprisingly, vacant, the rows behind us and in front of us were fully occupied.
Anyway, almost two weeks have now passed since that performance, and a representative of the Pantages said on Tuesday that there have been no reports of COVID spreading from anyone at “Hamilton.”
‘32 Acres’ — literally, a walk in the park
If you’re looking for a theater-sponsored experience that is the polar opposite of paying at least $49 — and maybe a lot more — to join hundreds of other people inside the Pantages or any theater, consider “32 Acres.”
You can experience “32 Acres” all by yourself, and it occurs entirely outdoors, in Los Angeles State Historic Park, near Chinatown. It’s free of charge — other than the expense of operating a smartphone with a headset.
The electronic gear enables you to follow the recorded narration by Marike Splint, who is described by Center Theatre Group as “a Dutch French-Tunisian theatre maker based in Los Angeles, specializing in creating work in public spaces that explore the relationship between people, places and identity.” CTG is presenting her “soundwalk” in association with UCLA School of Film, Theater and Television.
Los Angeles State Historic Park is a space that even a lot of longtime Angelenos don’t know — but should. Its 32 acres have seen a lot of history, but most of the evidence can no longer be seen, because the historical remnants are buried beneath the park.
Splint’s words, set atop a sound design by Jonathan Snipes, guide listeners on a walking tour of the park — but it’s more than a recitation or even an evocation of some of the park’s history. It’s a meditation about the evolutionary nature of cities in general and Los Angeles in particular, the effects of COVID on our memories, the history of parks and their relationship to theater, the question of how long such LA traditional emblems as palm and orange trees — which aren’t native to this area — must linger here before they shed “non-native” status.
I found it all fascinating. It was invigorating to explore the park through this physically active and intellectually inquisitive method.
By the way, Splint frequently identifies the park’s four sides by using the words north, south, east and west — when in fact, the park’s orientation is much more nuanced. As you can see on most maps of the surrounding area, the park’s dominant axis curves away from the big four “cardinal” directions and exists mostly on a southwest to northeast line. The “ordinal” directions — northeast, southwest, southeast and southwest — would be much more accurate in describing the horizons of this place. Perhaps because I looked at the maps before I arrived, I was a little confused by the use of the single-direction terms.
“32 Acres” supposedly ends on September 29, but why? It’s not as if the park will be covered by snow on October 1. Keep it up at least until the end of the year.
LA’s ZIP codes and ‘Chalk Lines’
A couple of smaller companies also developed COVID-era programming oriented around specific parts of LA.
For “The ZIP Code Plays,” Antaeus Theatre commissioned and recorded two sets of half-hour audio plays, with a third scheduled for release in December. Each set includes six fictional exchanges, organized around the different areas where the stories supposedly take place, often addressing social conflicts that are current within the neighborhood.
Unlike “32 Acres,” Antaeus doesn’t require the listener to go to the designated neighborhood in order to hear the play. But the Antaeus website supplements the fictions with its own non-fictional “guided tours” of each community — not that there is necessarily any connection between the fictional and non-fictional narratives other than their geographical proximity.
Chalk Repertory Theatre, which has long specialized in site-specific productions, produced “Chalk Lines,” which is at least superficially similar to “The ZIP Code Plays,” but on a smaller scale. The average running time of its five short audio plays is about 12 minutes. They are set only in central LA, more or less from Chinatown to Exposition Park to Leimert Park.
The opening audio in “Chalk Lines” is an expressionistic “tour” of the history of the area that’s more or less in the vicinity of the aforementioned “32 Acres” — written by lifelong Angeleno Luis Alfaro, who’s now an associate artistic director at CTG. Most of the other “Chalk Lines” are closer to the more realistic style of “The ZIP Code Plays” — although Colette Robert’s “Leimert Park Drum Circle, Sunday Afternoon” is an impressionistic reverie more than a situational scene.
Timely? Yes, but…
When I saw “Closely Related Keys” on the weekend after the final American withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and two weeks before the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the timing seemed uncanny — especially because in pre-COVID 2019 International City Theatre had originally scheduled this production for the summer of 2020, when it wouldn’t have been nearly as timely.
The play is set in 2010. One of the characters was personally affected by loss on 9/11. Another is an Iraqi who worked for the American war effort there, and in 2010 he desperately wants American assistance in leaving Iraq and reaching the USA. Where have we heard similar stories recently? Oh yes, two countries to the east.
Unfortunately, at least in terms of current topicality, this Iraqi who helped the Americans is the least important of the four characters in the play, which is set entirely in New York. So he literally phones in his lines from faraway, with large gaps of time when he isn’t on stage and is more or less forgotten.
A previous version of “Closely Related Keys” introduced the play at Hollywood’s Lounge Theatre in 2014. According to a representative for the current ICT production, one of Wendy Graf’s goals in rewriting the play was to focus less attention on the Iraqi man. He probably has fewer lines now than he had in the first version (which I didn’t see). So when I use “uncanny” to describe the production’s timing, I mean “not canny” as well as “serendipitously on target”.
A lot happens in this play, perhaps too much. The central character is a young hotshot corporate attorney, whose father worked in Iraq for years. She doesn’t know that her dad fathered another daughter there. But suddenly this Iraqi half-sister is on her way to New York, where she might attend Juilliard; she occasionally pulls out her violin to play the theme from Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” (cue the reference to a woman telling tales in “The Arabian Nights”). She also claims to be able to speak 14 languages, including four that “do not any longer exist.”
Both sisters’ mothers are dead, for unusual but quite different reasons. Meanwhile, the attorney, who is Black, is having a fling with her white boss, who is more serious about their relationship than she is.
For a while, the crosscutting subplots appear to make the play more complex, but eventually it just seems more cluttered. Saundra McClain’s ICT staging in Long Beach looks sharp, but I’m not sure that I will ever suspend disbelief that these two half-sisters, as they appear here, might some day feel “closely related.”