Chicago’s Hamilton franchise opened at PrivateBank Theatre on October 19, the same evening as the final presidential debate. In any other year that might be considered a sweetly symbolic coincidence: the republic seen then and now, at its fiery birth and in stable maturity. But things are a little different this year, aren’t they? This is the time of Hillary and Donald. The season of the lesser evil, when many of us wish we could just mark our ballots “appalled.”
And crucially, we see the whole thing in colors. Shades of brown, to be specific. Every principal role in Hamilton (including the title one, neatly performed by Miguel Cervantes) is filled—with pointed historical inaccuracy—by people bearing Latino surnames and/or dark skin. The concept leads to some deep ironies that go unremarked by Miranda: slaveholder Washington, for instance, played by black actor Joshua Kirkland; Jefferson’s black mistress and slave, Sally Hemings, appearing briefly opposite Chris De’Sean Lee’s Jefferson, also black, in a moment that comes across as the racial equivalent of an Escher print, tying real and invented worlds up in knots. These oddities together with certain elisions—women never quite taking center stage, Native American issues dispensed with entirely—demonstrate just how fine a needle Miranda is trying to thread.
Through 9/17/17: Wed 1:30 and 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Tue 7:30 PM; also Mon 12/19, 7:30 PM, PrivateBank Theatre, 18 W. Monroe, 312-902-1400, broadwayinchicago.com, $62-$597.
