Broadway hit ‘Hamilton’ heading to Smith Center
All roads lead to Vegas — including “Hamilton’s.”
The hip-hop Broadway musical about founding father Alexander Hamilton, which has been everywhere from the Grammy Awards to the White House, will play The Smith Center for the Performing Arts during the 2017-18 season.
Smith Center officials and “Hamilton” producer Jeffrey Seller were expected to announce the Las Vegas booking today.
“We can’t talk about the dates yet,” cautioned Smith Center President Myron Martin, adding that “Hamilton’s” run “will definitely be longer than our typical one-week engagement.”
After all, “audiences have been clamoring for this title from coast to coast,” Martin said. “It’s coming to Las Vegas — how exciting is that? I’m giddy.”
Martin and Smith Center colleagues have been working to bring “Hamilton” to Las Vegas “since the day I saw it,” he added. (For the record, that was on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2015; Martin has the ticket stub to remind him.)
“It really is one of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever seen,” he said. “It’s serious material, it’s important material, told in an extraordinary way.”
Previously, “Hamilton” officials announced an open-ended Chicago run starting in late September; a second company begins a 21-week San Francisco engagement in March 2017, followed by a Los Angeles run from Aug. 11 to Dec. 30, 2017.
The show has been a sold-out sensation since its August 2015 Broadway debut.
Last month, “Hamilton” won a Grammy Award for best musical theater album, and the original cast — led by star and creator Lin-Manuel Miranda — electrified live and television audiences with a rendition of the show’s opening number, seen via satellite from Broadway.
“The ten-dollar founding father without a father got a lot farther by working a lot harder,” the rap-style lyrics explain, “by being a lot smarter, by being a self-starter …”
Miranda and other cast members visited the White House earlier this month for performances, student workshops, even a freestyle rap session in the Rose Garden, with President Obama assisting Miranda.
That visit brought Miranda full circle; he first performed material from his “Hamilton Mixtape” in a 2009 White House poetry evening, earning a standing ovation from President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama.
Ron Chernow, whose Hamilton biography inspired the musical, has been quoted as saying that Miranda “forged a unique idiom” for the musical “that blended formal 18th-century speech with 21st-century slang.”
Miranda and his collaborators won multiple Tony Awards, including best musical, in 2008 for “In the Heights.” They seem destined to collect even more for “Hamilton” at this year’s Tony Awards on June 12. (Nominations will be announced May 3.)
Show dates and ticket information for “Hamilton’s” Smith Center run will be announced later.
Those who buy 2016-17 season tickets — and renew next year for the 2017-18 season — will be guaranteed “Hamilton” tickets, Martin said.
But “this is not about selling tickets,” he said. “We’re thrilled to be able to bring this amazing show to Las Vegas.”
Read more stories from Carol Cling at reviewjournal.com. Contact her at ccling@reviewjournal.com and follow @CarolSCling on Twitter.
