“Hamilton,” Lin-Manuel Miranda’s megahit musical about our most charismatic Founding Father, stands poised to sweep the 2016 Tony Awards when they are presented Sunday night.
St. Louis theatergoers will be among the first to see the show on tour. It will play the Fox Theatre in the 2017-18 season.
Competition to book the tour was high; the show is so popular that it has been difficult to buy tickets in New York, even at inflated rates. Some brokers charge over $1,000 a seat.
How did the Fox manage to book it?
“Perhaps it’s an acknowledgment of the ongoing success of the Fabulous Fox Theatre and our incredible audience — or it’s as simple as how the show needs to move across the country,” said Kristin Caskey, president of Fox Theatricals. The company — which produced last season’s Tony-winner for best musical, “Fun Home,” and is a producer of one of this year’s nominees for best play, “The Humans” — also books the theater on Grand Boulevard. “Whatever the reason, we are thrilled to be one of the early cities lucky enough to welcome the phenomenon that is ‘Hamilton.’”
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The show will also open in September in Chicago for a run currently scheduled for six months and in 2017 for five months in Los Angeles.
Dates for the production’s run here have not yet been determined. However, patrons who have subscriptions for the coming season, 2016-17, will be first in line to buy tickets for 2017-18. They will be able to guarantee their seats for “Hamilton” before tickets are available to the general public.
During the 2016-17 season, the Fox will present “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” “Fun Home,” “Finding Neverland,” “An American in Paris,” “Something Rotten” and “Cabaret.” The other shows in the 2017-18 season will be announced later.
Based on Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton, “Hamilton” is up for 16 Tony Awards, the most in Tony history. Miranda, 36 — the author, composer and star of the Broadway production — received the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in drama for “Hamilton,” a musical acclaimed by critics and audiences alike.
Michelle Obama called it “the best piece of art in any form that I have ever seen in my life.”
With a multiracial cast and a score that includes hip-hop, the show is both historic and contemporary. Peter Kastor, chair of the history department at Washington University, says that Hamilton alone among the founders suits this treatment.
Hamilton was born in the West Indies to an unmarried woman and arrived penniless in colonial New York. He went on, however, to be George Washington’s right-hand man during the Revolutionary War and to serve as the country’s first secretary of the Treasury. He was only 47 when Aaron Burr shot him to death in a duel.
“Hamilton is an exciting, romantic figure — a Horatio Alger figure,” Kastor said. “He arrives in New York City and masters it, through his own hard work and talent.”
The musical, Kastor said, emphasizes some aspects of Hamilton’s career at the expense of others that are no longer so appealing (such as his elitism regarding government). But Kastor has already enjoyed the Grammy-winning cast recording, and he looks forward to seeing the show for himself.
“This is a musical that got America interested in federal debt assumption,” he said. “That’s one of the most important things about the early federal government, and this show has a whole song about it! I take my hat off to it.”
The Tony Awards air at 7 p.m. Sunday on KMOV (Channel 4).