MIRANDA ACT
STORY AND PHOTO
BY STEPHEN VRATTOS
Residents began to jockey
for the best seats more than
an hour before the start of
the University Club meeting on
Thursday evening, July 27. The
reason: the return of presenter
extraordinaire John Kenrick.
Couple that with the subject of his
talk, “Hamilton: The Man, The
Musical, The Phenomenon,” and
you have a perfect storm of interest,
which assuredly would’ve been
SRO had it not conflicted with the
Men’s Club’s “Member & Guest”
dinner at Crabtree’s in Floral Parks
and VIP Room DVD Series showing
of the movie, “Coco Chanel,”
starring Shirley MacLaine. As it
was the audience stretched far into
the depths of the large card room.
It was only a few years ago a talk
on America’s inaugural Treasurer
and only Founding Father to
grace a major U.S. monetary unit,
who was not a president, would
garner minor excitement. But the
eponymous Broadway megahit
musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda
changed all that when it opened to
sold-out crowds and wild acclaim
Off-Broadway at the Public Theatre
in January 2015 before it moved
to the Richard Rodgers Theatre on
Broadway in August of that year.
Even after Miranda left the show
July 9, 2016, the musical continues
to sell out well in advance and
shows no sign of slowing down.
With Miranda’s acclaimed and
award-winning 2008 debut musical,
“In the Heights,” the fledgling creator
revolutionized the Broadway
musical by introducing Hip-Hop to
the artistic form; with “Hamilton”
he took it a step further, cannily
crafting a harmonious melding of
the urban musical style with traditional
musical theater songwriting
and historic storytelling, creating
a show which is powerful, compelling
and breathtaking for both
young and old.
“He gave Hip-Hop a form it
doesn’t normally have,” confessed
Kenrick, a devout adherent of the
Rodgers and Hammerstein school
of Broadway songwriting, who was
ambivalent toward Hip-Hop and its
patois of hateful speech, profanity
and misogyny before “Hamilton.”
Miranda proved the legitimacy of
Speaker Kenrick strikes
a dramatic pose
the form by removing the negative
aspects and concentrating on
the rhythms, rhymes and wordplay,
which rival the best of the
Gershwins, Sondheim or Gilbert
and Sullivan, as perfectly exemplified
in the following verse from the
show’s opening number:
The ten-dollar Founding Father
without a father
Got a lot farther by working a
lot harder
By being a lot smarter
By being a self-starter
By fourteen, they placed him in
charge of a trading charter
“It’s not just a hit show, it’s a
blessed phenomenon. When’s the
last time a show made national
news because of the way the audience
reacted?” Kenrick asked
before showing the infamous
YouTube clip of Vice-President
Mike Pence’s attendance at a
production soon after President
Trump’s election in November, at
which the cast respectfully asked
the Vice-President to show compassion
and consideration in dealing
Popular NST Presenter, John Kenrick, returns
with a talk on “Hamilton: The Musical”
with minorities and immigrants and
to be inclusive of all Americans,
which belay the hateful rhetoric
concerning such forwarded by
Trump before the election. Pence
was unresponsive as he strode out
of the theater, but the Hamilton
cast received an angry tweet from
President Trump in response the
next day after the video went viral,
a fierce rebuke and demand for an
apology for his vice-president.
The President’s reaction is
ironic given the fact Alexander
Hamilton himself was an immigrant
from a small island in the West
Indies, “a lump of volcanic rock
(per Kenrick)”, called Nevis. As
explained in the very first line of the
show’s opening number, Hamilton
was “a bastard, orphan, son of a
whore,” who was abandoned by his
adulterous father after his mother
died from a sickness, which also
nearly took the life of Hamilton.
How Hamilton rose from such
dire circumstances to become the
country’s first Treasurer and one
of its most important Founding
Fathers was told in the 2004 New
York Times bestselling biography,
“Hamilton,” by Ron Chernow,
which served as Miranda’s inspiration
for the musical.
But Hamilton’s story is literally
at the fingertips of anyone with a
laptop, tablet or smart phone. It
is in Kenrick’s performance, multimedia
usage, unearthing of fascinating
trivia and accompanying
anecdotes, which set him apart
from a staid regurgitation of facts.
His Hamilton presentation featured
such stories as:
• How Miranda happened upon
Chernow’s tome at the airport gift
shop, where he was set to takeoff
for a vacation after the success of
“In the Heights,” simply because of
the book’s intimidating thickness,
which the young creator hoped
would adequately fill his twoweek
trip
• How President Obama’s daughters
convinced their dad to bring
Miranda to perform at The White
House, where he first announced
his intention of using Alexander
Hamilton as the inspiration for his
next project, eliciting an outburst
of laughter, which Miranda stifled
with a performance of what would
become the musical’s opening song
• The thought processes in creating
the perfect Broadway poster/
logo and the early designs of
“Hamilton,” which lead to its iconic
image of the legendary duelist, with
upraised hand, serving as the top
point of a star
• How the success of “Hamilton:
The Musical” saved the Founding
Father from being replaced by
Harriet Tubman on the $10 bill
• How Miranda and his family’s
intense love of Broadway led
Miranda to take them on a trip to
Salzburg, Austria, after he retired
from “Hamilton,” where the whole
clan re-enacted the “Do-Re-Mi”
musical scene from the film adaptation
of “The Sound of Music”
These are just a few of the wonderful
stories Kenrick shares, using
rare images and videos, and delivered
with an infectious buoyant
enthusiasm, and the reason why
his events continue to be among
the most popular at North Shore
Towers.
Lin-Manuel Miranda as Aaron Burr in “Hamilton: The Musical”
Kenrick’s performance was
recorded by John Virga and
the University Club made it
available to be aired on the
NST in-house channel 995.
It was shown frequently in
August and may be shown
periodically in September, if
requested. It is the first offering
of what is planned for
channel 995 to be titled “NST
LIVE on TAPE."
10 NORTH SHORE TOWERS COURIER ¢ September 2017