The show won 11 Tony Awards, including best
new musical, best book and best score. The cast
album has been a blockbuster and the show has
toured to packed houses. But only in this filmed
version is the original cast once again married
with Andy Blankenbuehler’s choreography and
Howell Binkley’s lighting design. These were all
the seeds of world-conquering greatness.
Thomas Kail, who helmed the successful “Grease:
Live” on Fox and won a Tony for directing
“Hamilton,” directed the filmed version. Kail’s
camera captures actors’ intimate faces during
key moments in a way impossible for theater-
goers and incorporates audience reaction to
create an electric filmed version.
The musical charts the rise and fall of statesman
Alexander Hamilton and stresses his orphan,
immigrant roots — “Immigrants. We get the
job done!” is one line that gets huge applause —
as well as his almost Greek tragedy of a fall, fed
by ambition.
It’s hard to underestimate how fresh “Hamilton”
was just a few years ago: A reclaiming of America’s
founding story by a multicultural cast using
modern music, language and themes. Based on a
biography by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron-
Chernow and developed during the presidency of
the first Black president, the show was optimistic
and ambitious, tweaking Broadway traditions but
respecting them, too. What other show would pit
two Founding Fathers in a rap battle over whether
to aid France?
Many in the brilliant cast were relatively
unknown to the wider world when they hit the
stage: Daveed Diggs, Renée Elise Goldsberry,
Jonathan Groff, Christopher Jackson, Leslie