‘Hamilton’: Hip-hop and Founding Fathers in dazzling Broadway musical

NEW YORK — Stare at a $10 bill at the Richard Rodgers Theatre — you’ll need one for a soda and tip — and you might discern an unusually chirpy expression on the grainy visage of Alexander Hamilton. For the Founding Father never had a friend so loyal and true as Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose audaciously ambitious and supremely executed new musical is surely the most entertaining, provocative and moving civics lesson in Broadway history.

“Hamilton,” which tells the story of a key figure in the composition and the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, and stars Miranda, the author of book, music and lyrics, in the title role, has been such a red-hot property since its debut at the New York Public Theater that its producers risked an unusual opening in the dog days of August. One can see why they were so emboldened. This is, for sure, an extraordinary new show that commands attention not least by stripping the cobwebs off the dignified but musty gents generally referred to as the Founding Fathers (as if in their dignified dotage) and reminding us that the American Revolution actually was fought and won by the young, the energetic and the intensely radical.

These were forceful men with complicated lives, intramural rivalries and no preexisting blueprint for their nation-building, Miranda asserts, and also men who were determined to forge a new country in their own brazen and messy image. Hamilton, cast here as the real intellectual of the bunch, with a superior mind to those who actually landed in the White House or who generally get more credit for parenting American democracy, was himself a recent immigrant. From the West Indies.

Thus in one of the many carefully crafted anachronisms — the characters in “Hamilton” speak in contemporary vernacular and, at times, as if history were already written — Miranda uses that part of the Hamiltonian history to point out the very un-Trumpian notion that when there is work in America to be done, immigrants invariably are the ones getting the job done.

Much has been made of Miranda’s hip-hop-influenced musical form, and it’s true that the language and nomenclature of “Hamilton” feel wildly fresh and distinctive. It is no small task to create a world where Thomas Jefferson can say “Wassup” without anything feeling arched or seeming forced. But what makes Miranda such a uniquely potent Broadway figure is that he also is steeped in the craft and tradition of the American musical and can forge melody and lyrics that hold up to the work of the old masters; you can see the influence of Richard Rodgers just as explicitly as The Notorious B.I.G. (both are riffed upon with equal alacrity and complexity). And thus many of the songs in “Hamilton” are quite staggeringly beautiful — richly melodic and passionately performed ballads of fear, hope, determination and pain. They feel traditional and revolutionary at the same time.

So while “Hamilton” is certainly a show that moves the musical form forward, and will be lauded as such, its design language (the shrewd set is by David Korins, and Paul Tazewells’ costumes are complex) and its dramaturgical point of view owe something to “Spring Awakening” and “American Idiot.” But what this show uniquely (well, “1776” aside) has going for it is that it is telling the story of America, and thus motivating people to look anew at the raw idealism and risk-taking that founded the nation, especially the egalitarianism of the Constitution. That’s why President Barack Obama already showed up in the audience. This is no quixotic Euro-narrative; the creation of America is the narrative.

Hamilton also spent a lot of time in New York City, which allows Miranda to follow another rule of the Broadway musical: laud NYC as the greatest city in the world and the creative center of the universe. Not, it is notable, Washington D.C. In many ways, “Hamilton” (which was inspired by Ron Chernow’s book “Alexander Hamilton”) makes a better argument for New York’s centrality in early America than has been made before.

Yet at the same time the title character’s biography — he lost his beloved son — also makes room for sorrow and allows the show to assert one of life’s great truths. You can achieve on a global stage — heck you could write a good chunk of one of the greatest documents of all time — and yet the loss of one you love can draw a defining curtain of sadness over all else. That’s where “Hamilton” hits you in the most unexpected of ways.

Thomas Kail, the immensely skilled director of “Hamilton,” not only unleashes all of this excitement with abandon, but he also forges a wholly consistent world, aided by the best work of choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler’s career. The show carries a sensational ensemble and features the most amusing of cameos by Jonathan Groff as a petulant King George, whose stiff, monarchical pronouncements are undermined and infantilized by the silliest and catchiest of melodies. Miranda makes the king of England sound like a childish version of Petula Clark. It’s reductive but brilliant.

So is much else in a show that makes extraordinary use of a diverse cast (it seems to me, however, that Miranda could and should have cast a woman as one of these Founding Fathers, which would have made an important point). As it is, the women mostly sing about love and personal matters, although a couple of the numbers, and several of the performances from the likes of Renee Elise Goldsberry and Phillipa Soo, are fine indeed.

Aside from Miranda’s own Hamilton — played as a reluctant hero, alternately reactive and proactive and yet never wholly comfortable in the center — there are two other extraordinary performances. One comes from Leslie Odom Jr., who essays Aaron Burr, the Che-like narrator of the proceedings, the moral conscience of the piece and yet simultaneously a self-aware participant in early democracy who foreshadowed both the American governmental interest in pragmatism (at best) or corruption (at worse). And then there’s Daveed Diggs’ unplugged Jefferson, an improviser of expedient sensibility who well knew that you always have to pay attention to how they might tell your story.

Miranda is not a crucial onstage presence; his main achievement here is compositional. And thus the truly thrilling story of “Hamilton” deserves to — and surely will be — told on Broadway for many years to come. Who even thought such a thing might be possible?

“Hamilton” plays at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, 226 W. 46th St, New York; 877-250-2929 or hamiltonbroadway.com.

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

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Twitter @ChrisJonesTrib