Audiences wowed at return season of Hamilton, the world’s biggest musical

Like Hair in the 1960s and Rent in the 1990s, Hamilton is the defining musical of the 2000s; a game-changer.

Jason Arrow reprises his role as Alexander Hamilton.

Hamilton. Music, lyrics and book by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Lyric Theatre, Sydney, August 8.

Like Hair in the 1960s and Rent in the 1990s, Hamilton is the defining musical of the 2000s; a game-changer. Looking at the competition in the first quarter of the 21st century there’s Hamilton and then daylight. And yes, that does include Wicked.

Back in Sydney, where it first opened in 2021, Hamilton has confirmed its staying power.

It’s morning in America, kind of, as a bunch of revolutionaries does what it takes to chuck out the Brits and form a new nation. The unlikely hero of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical is the firebrand Alexander Hamilton (Jason Arrow, a seasoned veteran of the role), who finds common cause with like-minded disrupters. That they include Gerard-Luke Malgas’s rip-roaring glamour boy Marquis de Lafayette is a delicious treat.

You’ll be sorry, warns a wickedly fruity King George III (Brent Hill), and while he isn’t entirely correct, there’s tragedy enough.

Back in Sydney, where it first opened in 2021, Hamilton has confirmed its staying power.

A penniless, ambitious migrant from the Caribbean, Hamilton was first a soldier, then a politician and an economist. Through Hamilton and other founding fathers, Miranda gives form to the rough and tumble of American politics, the sense of exceptionalism, the zeal, the fervour, the combativeness, the lust for power and yes, the violence. Hamilton didn’t die in his bed.

The big helping of 18th-century history – it is actually extremely interesting – comes with a frisson thanks to current world affairs.

One of the big laughs on opening night went to the assertion that “vice president is not a real job anyway”. Less funny are the implications of the horse-trading job done on framing the Constitution and the assertion that “one way to win is to provoke outrage”. Ring any bells?

All this is driven by the sounds and rhythms of popular music with the dynamic force of rap doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Miranda’s pungent lyrics pack huge amounts of information into relatively small spaces at exhilarating speed.

But there are beautiful ballads, too, for introspective moments. The tension between political advancement and personal happiness is an ever-present thread in Hamilton. It’s a theme illuminated poignantly by the superbly drawn women in Hamilton’s life: his wife Eliza Schuyler (Vidya Makan) and strikingly intelligent sister-in-law Angelica (powerhouse Akina Edmonds).

Vidya Makan plays Eliza Schuyler.

The strength of Miranda’s songwriting and Makan’s performance is seen nowhere more clearly than in Burn, Eliza’s response to her husband’s infidelity. The opening-night audience was raucous for much of the evening but for this song was stilled, making not a breath of sound in the several long silences built in.

There was no such restraint needed for the phenomenal George Washington of Googoorewon Knox and Malgas’s Thomas Jefferson (doubled with his Lafayette). Malgas isn’t the strongest singer on stage but oozes mischief.

While those men are important to Hamilton, the key relationship is with his early comrade and ultimate adversary, Aaron Burr. Callan Purcell gives a fascinatingly different performance from that of his predecessor, Lyndon Watts. There’s still the vaulting ambition that’s Burr’s tragic flaw but Purcell shows you the bureaucrat, not the leader. That’s his real tragedy.

The balance is now in Hamilton’s favour, particularly as Arrow is likely to get to about 1000 performances in the role during this Sydney season. He’s relaxed into the part and is in formidable voice.

There are one or two moments when the second act sags but there’s enough euphoria to carry the day. This is magnificently restless, urgent theatre.

Tickets: $125-$350. Bookings online. Duration: 2 hours 45 minutes including interval. Booking until January 2025.