Jason Arrow: ‘How Hamilton rewired me’

He’s played the dream role of Alexander Hamilton for four years – performing for longer than the show’s creator Lin-Manuel Miranda as the lead – and Jason Arrow says the intensity of the demanding role has changed the way his brain works.

It’s the role that has consumed Jason Arrow for some 1500 days. That’s more than 750 fast-paced three-hour shows over four years in seven cities, here and all over the world. That’s also more than 20,000 words – an average of 144 a minute.

A show like Hamilton – a character like Alexander Hamilton – gets under your skin. And Arrow has played the role longer than anyone in the world, even more than the show’s creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda.

And, yes, it becomes you. It changes you. And the Australian performer is living proof
of that.

“The show has changed me on a brain chemical level,” he explains. “In the sense of how I think and how I talk, everything is quite rapid for me these days, especially thought processing, which is not something that used to be an issue for me.

“So obviously that plays into stress, stress management and all those sorts of things.

“I have had to take up meditation and deep breathing, ashwagandha (a herb to help relieve stress) – things like that which help with adrenals and stress management, cortisol management ...

Jason Arrow as Alexander Hamilton.

“Purely because the show, that role, does do that to you. It’s very highly strung. It’s a lot. It’s anger, it’s dealing with death, and it’s dealing with it all very quickly.

“So your brain, doing that over four years, it’s gonna start thinking that’s how you are; it doesn’t know the difference.

“It just goes, ‘That’s naturally what you’re like; that’s who we are now’.”

The result of the show’s intensity started manifesting itself in Arrow physically about 10 months ago, in the form of random hive breakouts and panic attacks.

“So I’ve had to really start doing meditation stuff in the morning, deep breathing in the morning, and sometimes, if I’m feeling a bit highly strung before the show, I’ll also just have a quick five-minute meditation,” he says.

“That seems to be helping mellow (it) out.”

Jason Arrow with partner Alexandra Cornish at Tamarama Beach. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Arrow’s long-term partner and fellow actor, Alexandra Cornish, told him the ill effects were “because of the show; it’s changing your chemistry”.

Before Arrow was cast in Hamilton, Cornish had never been out of the country. Now she has a dozen stamps on her passport.

Being in the industry “she gets it”, Arrow says, of life on the road, and she loves
having the flexibility to share the experience with him.

“When Michael (producer Michael Cassel) announced we were going to come back to Sydney because of the (Covid) shutdown ... I was like, ‘I’ll do up until the end of that and I won’t do any more’,” Arrow says.

“I didn’t realise it would take four years to get there,” he laughs.

A lot has changed since Arrow’s first timeon stage at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre back in 2021, when the Hamilton phenomenon first took Australia by storm. At the time, it was the only production still going despite the pandemic wreaking havoc, proving to be just the joy – and escape – homebound Sydneysiders needed.

But Covid did cut the season short, leaving Cassel vowing to return to where it started – after performing in Melbourne, then Brisbane in 2023, followed by Auckland, Manila, Abu Dhabi and Singapore, of course.

Hamilton at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre. Picture: Daniel Boud

Arrow loved having Cornish on tour with him, and says over the four years on stage many cast and crew also had their families with them. Backstage, they watched children grow before their eyes – and that experience ties you together like no other, Arrow says.

“The industry is definitely shifting like that, and I think the Michael Cassel Group is definitely leading the way in that,” he says.

“When it comes to families on tour, and they’re incredibly accommodating. Otherwise, it’s going to be an industry that only allows a certain type of person to be a part of it, which means you’re not getting a plethora of experiences, which also means you’re not getting people who are age appropriate for certain things.”

The show’s creator and original star Lin-Manuel Miranda with the Hamilton cast at QPAC, Brisbane.

True to Cassel’s word, Hamilton reopened in Sydney a month ago, and demand has seen the originally limited season extended until early January 2025.

“It’s been good to be back in Sydney,” says Arrow, who this time around is living at Randwick, not far from his favourite stretch of sand, Coogee Beach.

“It’s been a whirlwind, really, but a lot of familiar things, which has been nice.

“It kind of feels like a victory lap. We finished up the international tour, and now we get to finish up where we started. When we started the show, we were still coming out of Covid, so we didn’t really have the normal experience of what the show would have been like, opening in a normal time.

“It feels like we get to do over that initial period, which is really special, because that never usually happens.”

Even though he’s had the stress to manage, Arrow is thrilled to play the Hamilton lead role until the curtains close in 2025. More than anything, he’s excited to be home, because playing the role is one thing, but playing the role while contending with added layers of the exhaustion of travel, well, that’s entirely another matter.

“I’m definitely excited – and that’s a genuine response as well,” Arrow says. “Because I’m finding that the longer I’m doing the role, the easier it’s becoming.

Despite this, the role requires “full mental focus”. Arrow likens the experience to high-intensity interval training: it’s always hard, no matter how many times you do it, because your body will always push itself.

“It stays the same kind of intensity; you just give more and more each time,” he says.

To think of life after Hamilton is both a daunting and exciting prospect, Arrow admits. He’d love to do film or TV, and is open to everything, but – now used to the security of a usually elusive long-term gig – he doesn’t want to be open too long.

Jason Arrow at a Hamilton fan event last year. Picture: David Caird

“I’m excited to see the possibilities of what comes up, but also I don’t want to have no possibilities for too long,” he laughs.

“Trying to navigate that idea of being a free agent for a bit, but also that being a fun thing and there being like major possibilities for different things to happen.”

Also, from past experience he knows that Hamilton can get so under your skin. Even when you think you’re done with it, it may not be done with you, so never say never.

Arrow says those life-changing moments – like the call to say he’d been cast as Hamilton – don’t happen very often, so when they do, they deserve to be cherished.

“You have to relish it,” he says. “And I’ve definitely tried to relish this for as much of it as I can. I think I’ve milked it dry – like, it’s almost dead,” he jokes.

Arrow loves musicals and says they are a great medium through which to tell stories.

“But I have always wanted to do film and TV, so I wouldn’t say no to that,” he says.

Jason Arrow says it will be bittersweet when he finally farewells Hamilton. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Arrow is already pondering how he will feel the last time he leaves the Hamilton stage.

“Mine is obviously when I die: I go up the stairs ... and rest my hand on the set in that moment, and then leave,” Arrow says. “So I’ve had a few moments thinking about the last time I do that, and they’re definitely emotional.

“It’s definitely going to be difficult. But ... it is also an incredibly taxing show. So it will be bittersweet. I think doing it in the one spot for a long period of time is manageable – very manageable. It ends up just being part of life. But moving around and doing that is very taxing.”

But who knows what the future holds. Hamilton’s grasp may be tighter than he thinks.

“If there was a subheading or slogan for the show that was unofficial, it would be that Hamilton is never fully done with you,” Arrow says. “So I might say I’m done, and then all of a sudden all of next year I’m doing the role on West End.

“Who knows when the end is actually going to arrive? I’ll see that when we get there.”

■Hamilton is playing at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre until January