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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

The show where it happens

August 7, 2015 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the Broadway transfer of Hamilton and a Maine revival of Nice Work if You Can Get It. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton,” the multi-racial rap musical about Alexander Hamilton and the making of America that sold out the Public Theater this spring, has now moved to Broadway, just in time to profit from the ruckus over the possible removal of its namesake from the $10 bill. Not that the show needed any more publicity: It was already a plutonium-hot ticket, stoked by ecstatic reviews of the premiere and acres of near-lascivious advance coverage. No matter what the critics say this time around, “Hamilton” seems a safe bet to occupy the Richard Rodgers Theatre forevermore.

hamilton5f-2-webSo it should: “Hamilton” is the best and most important Broadway musical of the past decade. Why important? Because it sounds as though it had been written last week instead of a half-century ago. At the same time, and even more surprisingly, “Hamilton” enlists the musical language of hip-hop in the service of a patriotism that is at bottom as old-fashioned as skyrockets on the Fourth. Yet there is nothing quaint about the deeply thoughtful way in which Mr. Miranda has interwoven the tension between Hamilton’s personal ambition and sense of national mission with the parallel capacity of his fellow framers to balance realism with idealism….

The uptown version of “Hamilton” is not greatly changed from its off-Broadway predecessor. It’s still on the long side—two hours and 45 minutes—and I continue to think, as I did in February, that judicious cuts would have made it even stronger. That doesn’t matter much, though, for the vaulting energy of Mr. Miranda’s score sweeps all cavils aside…

Valerie Harper, who has continued to act while battling cancer, fell ill last Wednesday during a performance of “Nice Work if You Can Get It” at Maine’s Ogunquit Playhouse and was subsequently replaced on Tuesday by Brenda Vaccaro. Unable to postpone my planned Sunday-afternoon visit to Ogunquit, I instead saw Leslie Alexander, Ms. Harper’s emergency stand-by, and can report that no apologies of any kind were needed for her tough-broad second-act cameo as Millicent Winter, whose role was created by Estelle Parsons in 2012. Ms. Alexander couldn’t have been better, and neither could the rest of the production, which is comparable in quality to Kathleen Marshall’s original Broadway staging.

Much of the credit belongs to Peggy Hickey, the choreographer. She has a knack for knowing pastiche, and her evocations of Prohibition-era theatrical dance are lively and smart….

* * *

To read my review of Hamilton, go here.

To read my review of Nice Work if You Can Get It, go here.

To read my review of the original off-Broadway production of Hamilton, go here.

A CBS Sunday Morning feature on the off-Broadway premiere of Hamilton:

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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