How to sound like a ‘Hamilton’ expert

Las Vegas Review-Journal

7 years ago

This image released by The Public Theater shows Lin-Manuel Miranda, foreground, with the cast during a performance of “Hamilton,” in New York. (Joan Marcus/The Public Theater via AP)

Notorious B.I.G., who won rap artist and rap single of the year, clutches his awards at the podium during the Billboard Music Awards in New York, on evening, Dec. 6, 1995. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

(New York Post)

Lin-Manuel Miranda poses in the press room with the award for best musical at the Tony Awards, in New York in 2016. .(Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)

Haven’t seen “Hamilton”? Don’t have tickets? Here are some facts you can drop into any conversation about the musical to help you sound like an expert:

— The show’s full name is “Hamilton: An American Musical,” because a play about the Founding Father named “Hamilton” beat it to Broadway — by 98 years.

— According to the statistical analysts at Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com, “Hamilton’s” songs contain so many words that if they were delivered in typical Broadway fashion rather than rapped, the show would last anywhere from four to six hours, instead of 2½ hours (not counting intermission).

— The lyrics are inspired — or, at times, directly lifted — from the Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z and Mobb Deep, as well as “The Pirates of Penzance” and “South Pacific.”

— Alexander Hamilton founded the New York Post. Without him, we wouldn’t have been gifted 183 years later with one of the greatest headlines in the history of newspapers: “Headless Body in Topless Bar.”

— Plenty of people think Lin-Manuel Miranda is a genius, but his status as one has been confirmed. Sort of. In 2015, he received a MacArthur Fellowship, better known as a Genius Grant. Miranda is an Oscar away from an EGOT. Having previously won an Emmy, three Grammys and three Tonys, his only Oscar nomination, for “How Far I’ll Go” from “Moana,” had the misfortune of coming the same year as a little movie musical called “La La Land.”