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‘Hamilton’ Makes a Curious Cameo in Trump Impeachment Trial

Wait a minute. A lyric from a Broadway show is part of the most heated political discourse of the moment? Something from a musical has actually been appended to a major national talking point?

It was revealed on Monday that the title of John Bolton’s new memoir — a book that could possibly change the direction of the Trump impeachment investigation — is “The Room Where It Happened.” On Sunday, in a television interview with ABC’s “The Week,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, discussing the need for calling witnesses in the Senate investigation, said the show should “talk about the people who were in the room where it happened.”

The exact title of the song from “Hamilton,” Lin-Manuel Miranda’s blockbuster show, is “The Room Where It Happens.” One of the many elements that make “Hamilton” so exciting is its urgency, a sense of past events occurring in the here and now. In any case, that number is sung with passion and fathomless envy by Aaron Burr, the archrival of the man for whom the musical is named, Alexander Hamilton.

And yes, that is also the man whom Burr subsequently killed in a duel, propelled by the same combustible competitiveness that informs this song. Burr (Leslie Odom Jr. won a Tony in the original Broadway production) delivers this number while Hamilton, Jefferson and James Madison reach a compromise over dinner that will determine both the location of the nation’s capital and a federal tax system.

In other words, momentous events are happening, which will change the course of history, and the precise nature of them will forever be known only by those at the dinner table tonight. (This would have been more likely in the relatively surveillance-free United States of that era.) And it is killing Aaron Burr not to be there, and may well be in part what drives him to kill as well.

That the song title has now been appropriated by politicians suggests just how much “Hamilton” has become part of the American cultural oxygen supply. And it goes beyond not only the rarefied realm of musical theater obsessives, but also partisan use. (Don’t forget that “Hamilton” was firmly associated with the Obama White House, so much so that the Off Broadway spoof of the musical called “Spamilton” began by drawing parallels between the Obamas’ affection for “Hamilton” with that of the Kennedys’ for “Camelot.”)

In any case, it’s refreshing to have a Broadway show being part of mainstream conversation again, a rarity during my tenure as theater critic. The last time I can recall anything similar happening? Well, that would have been just after Donald J. Trump had been elected president in 2016, and his vice president-elect, Mike Pence, showed up at a Broadway performance of — yep, the same — “Hamilton.”

The actor Brandon Victor Dixon (who was playing Burr) stepped out at the curtain call to address Pence from the stage and asked him to keep his mind open to the breadth and value of American diversity. This in turn occasioned a tweet from the president that escalated into … Well, it was among of the first of many such dramas played out on social media.

There is much in “Hamilton” that addresses contemporary concerns and values in flux. (Insert quote in Latin about unchanging human nature.) But such a perspective coexists without all-darkening cynicism. Yes, “Hamilton” (based on Ron Chernow’s biography) understands that anyone who aspires to national office is going to require an immense ego and a hunger to rule. His heroes aren’t pure.

But, a couple of centuries after the facts, Miranda is able to find the present-tense electricity in a candle-lighted world. Somehow, hearing lyrics of his quoted by Bolton, the former national security adviser, and Senator Klobuchar seems to put a romanticizing distance around events that usually have my stomach churning. It’s a sensation that lasts about 30 seconds, but I’m grateful for it.

Source: Theater - nytimes.com

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