Tuesday, September 20, 2016

The Hamilton Starting Lineup

Hamilton, the smash hit Broadway show it's damn near impossible to get tickets to, opens its Chicago run one week from today! Thanks to the early group sales, and a thoughtful and organized friend, I'll be seeing the show on October 16.

To help people prepare for the run, Crain's has put together an article (shared with me by my friend over at The Daily Parker) giving the main characters, a quick bio, and 1-3 of their "defining lines." Their main reason for doing this is because the incredible wordplay composer/lyricist/awesome human being Lin-Manuel Miranda was able to put into the play might be a bit much for traditional theatre goers. In fact, the amount of material packed into the show would make the show more like 4-6 hours if written as a "traditional" musical.
"Hamilton" clocks in with twice as many words per minute as its closest competitor, "Spring Awakening." With its long run time and dense lyrics, "Hamilton" has nearly an order of magnitude more words than "1776."
SHOW PREMIERED CAST ALBUM LENGTH TOTAL WORDS WORDS PER MIN
Hamilton 2015 2h 23m 20,520 144
Spring Awakening 2006 1h 1m 4,709 77
Phantom of the Opera 1988 1h 40m 6,789 68
Company 1970 1h 1m 5,085 83
1776 1969 0h 41m 2,735 66
Candide 1956 1h 14m 5,616 76
Oklahoma! 1943 1h 14m 4,303 59
Pirates of Penzance 1879 1h 43m 5,962 58
And it works. Each time I listen to the Hamilton cast album, I'm astounded at the amazing word play and sheer brilliance of what Miranda was able to do. If you haven't listened yet, I highly encourage you to check it out and prepare to be wowed!

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