By Bill Hirschman, FloridaTheaterOnStage.com, for SouthFloridaReporter.com, Dec. 4, 2015 – Forget, if you can, the hype. Forget that you can’t get a ticket until the spring. Forget the phenomenon, the 60 Minutes profile, the appearances on late night talk shows.
From the defiant, fierce and joyful opening phrases about a bastard immigrant destined to become “a hero and a scholar,”Hamilton proves itself an electrifying game changer in the world of musical theater – and then continues to do it for another 2 hours and 45 minutes.
No, it is not the Second Coming as many overheated observers would have you believe, but it is a watershed work that may well transmute mainstream theater for a decade to come.
Lin-Manuel Miranda has eclipsed his artistic and popular success of In The Heights with the most unlikely elevator pitch since a couple of Frenchmen suggested making a musical of Victor Hugo’s doorstop novel about the existence of God, Les Misérables.