Success Behind the Broadway Musical “Hamilton”

Jenna Thomas, Reporter
March 10, 2017

To some people, Broadway is a thing of the past, but the popular musical Hamilton may have changed that.

Tickets are sold with prices as high as $1,534.00 at the Richard Rodgers theatre. It took home 16 Tony Awards. It successfully broke the typical broadway-style music by adding a hip-hop twist to it. Without a doubt, it was a major broadway success: Hamilton.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, center, and the cast of “Hamilton” perform at the Tony Awards at the Beacon Theatre on Sunday, June 12, 2016, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Hamilton is a life story about our youngest founding father, Alexander Hamilton. When the production of Hamilton was not as well known as it is now, Michelle Obama invited the cast of Hamilton to the White House to perform a couple show tunes that will just “Blow Us All Away.”

According to Emily Reinert, an English teacher for Hershey High School, ”All of the music tells a beautiful story that so many of us can relate to on some level: fighting for what you believe in, falling in love, facing temptation, wanting to ‘make’ something of ourselves…”

Now that the show is gaining popularity, the cast is starting to get more opportunities for advertisements. For example, Leslie Odom Jr. who plays Aaron Burr, was in a commercial for Nationwide. You may have also seen cast members Phillipa Soo as Eliza Schuyler, Renée Elise Goldsberry as Angelica Schuyler, and Jasmine Cephas Jones as Peggy Schuyler and Maria Reynolds perform “America the Beautiful” in the 2017 Super Bowl.  

The man behind Hamilton is 37 year old Lin Manuel Miranda. Miranda is not new to the broadway industry, as he was the composer for “In the Heights,” which has been playing at the Richard Rodgers theatre since 1999. He is currently married to Vanessa Nadal and has a child named Sebastian, who is two years old.  

When asked what Hamilton means to her, Bridget Starner, sophomore at Hershey High School, said, “I think Hamilton is a musical that Lin Miranda wrote for the youth of today so they know about [Alexander] Hamilton and what actually happened, and just made it into an upbeat hip hop musical.”

When making Hamilton, Miranda had a twist that was eye-catching to today’s pop culture.  His witty rap music informs people about Alexander Hamilton’s life, and also gives people a brief outline of what the musical may look like.  

Javier Munoz, who plays Alexander Hamilton in the hit Broadway musical, reacts as he reads a letter from Hamilton’s son Patrick to his father that starts with the words “Dear Papa,” Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2017, in New York. The letter is among a trove of artifacts related to Alexander Hamilton, including love letters to his wife Eliza, that will be offered up for auction at Sotheby’s Jan. 18. Hamilton set designer David Korins, who also helped Sotheby’s on the Americana auction’s space, of which the letters are a part, jokingly warned the Broadway star not to let his tears fall on Hamilton’s delicate old letter paper. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

The inspiration for the play came from the book  “Alexander Hamilton” by Ron Chernow published in March 2005.  It took Miranda a total of six years to write Hamilton. Even though Miranda did the majority of writing for Hamilton, there are still seven other people to be credited for Hamilton as well.  All the producers included for the production for Hamilton are: Jeffrey Seller, 52 years old, Jill Furman, around 48, Thomas Kail, 38, Daveed Diggs, 35, and Kevin McCollum, 54.

Since Hamilton is such a big hit, they have released a Hamilton Mixtape, which includes popular artists such as Sia, Jimmy Fallon, John Legend, Wiz Khalifa, and many more.  The mixtape was released on December 2, 2016.  The mixtape includes songs that were resung by those artists and new songs such as “The Third Cabinet Battle.” The whole album is being sold on iTunes for $14.99, and has over 977 ratings with a total of four and a half stars.  
All good things must come to an end, however. Miranda is stepping down from being the lead role, and actor Javier Muñoz will “Rise Up”  to take his part again.  Some may ask… again?  Yes.  This is the second time Javier would be taking Miranda’s part in a broadway musical.  The first time Muñoz has taken Miranda’s part was in “In the Heights” as Usnavi in 2008.  Muñoz used to be working as a Reese’s Cup in Hershey Park to get more flexibility to help him with situations like auditions, callbacks, or things that may better himself when performing.