Hamilton Tickets

By: Book, Music & Lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Inspired the book 'Alexander Hamilton' by Ron Chernow
Director: Thomas Kail
Producer: The Public Theater, Jeffrey Seller, Sander Jacobs, and Jill Furman
Cast list: Trey Curtis (as Alexander Hamilton), Deejay Young (as Aaron Burr), Morgan Anita Wood (as Eliza Hamilton), Jennie Harney-Fleming (as Angelica Schuyler), Kyle Scatliffe (as Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson), Tamar Greene (as George Washington), Rubén J. Carbajal (as John Laurens/Phillip Hamilton), Ebrin R. Stanley (as James Madison/Hercules Mulligan), Cherry Torres (as Peggy Schuyler/Maria Reynolds), Jarrod Spector (as King George)
Design: David Korins
Lighting: Howell Binkley
Costume: Paul Tazewell
Choreography: Andy Blankenbuehler
Sound: Nevin Steinberg
Other info: Music Direction & Orchestrations by Alex Lacamoire

Surrounding Hamilton in the musical are plenty of real-life historical figures: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, the Marquis de Lafayette, and more. They make mischief throughout the show as they navigate the behemoth task of founding a new country and creating a government.

Miranda was first inspired to write an Alexander Hamilton musical in 2008 after reading Ron Chernow’s 700-page biography of the Founding Father on vacation. Miranda had just won the Best Musical Tony Award for In the Heights that year, so then-President Barack Obama invited him to perform a song from the show at the 2009 White House Poetry Jam. Instead, Miranda surprised everyone by busting out an early version of his budding musical’s opening number.

The rest, as they say, is history. Hamilton premiered off Broadway at The Public Theater in 2015, transferring later that year to the Richard Rodgers Theatre. For writing Hamilton's book, music, and lyrics, Miranda would become a household name.

It seemed ludicrous at first, but to Miranda, Alexander Hamilton embodied hip-hop. Hamilton director Thomas Kail later explained in an interview: “You have someone born into very difficult circumstances — profound poverty, no parents, no support — who used words to elevate himself out of those circumstances, and then died violently because of those words. That’s a classic hip-hop story. It’s the story of Tupac or Big.”

What to watch for

• Miranda initially conceived Hamilton as a record called The Hamilton Mixtape, but Kail encouraged him to develop a full musical. The Hamilton Mixtape was later released as a companion album to the show.
• In the Heights, about a small community in New York’s Washington Heights, has lots of parallels with Hamilton. Miranda’s longtime collaborators Kail and Andy Blankenbuehler (Hamilton’s choreographer) were involved in that production, and In the Heights also played at the Richard Rodgers Theatre.
• The show has real cred in the music industry: Questlove and Black Thought of The Roots executive produced the show’s original cast recording.
• Hamilton is full of homages to other shows. The lyric “Nobody needs to know” comes directly from Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years. George Washington’s line “I’m the model of a modern major general” is from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance. Hamilton also quotes a line from Macbeth: "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day."
• Hamilton made history musicals cool and fresh, but Miranda’s isn’t the first musical about the American Revolution. His show is predated by the 1969 Best Musical winner 1776, which follows John Adams as he tries to convince his fellow politicians to declare independence from Britain.