One recent Sunday morning in Brisbane, the American Broadway superstar Lin-Manuel Miranda joined me for an interview on stage in front of 2,000 people. Thirty thousand people had entered a lottery to attend.
Think about that for a second: 30,000 Australians were prepared to travel from wherever they lived to listen to an actor-composer discuss a hip-hop musical about one of America's founding fathers. And not one of the most famous ones, either, like George Washington or Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin.
No, the crowd was obsessed with the former US Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, dead now for 219 years.
I have never been more hit up by people for tickets to an event or access to somebody I was interviewing than in the lead-up to Lin-Manuel Miranda — and I've sat down with Paul McCartney and Elton John.
I heard from Facebook friends to whom I've barely spoken in 30 years, asking if there was any way I could get them tickets. An acquaintance texted me to say she wouldn't forgive herself if she didn't ask me to take her backstage. A man I had met once contacted me via a mutual friend and said he would pay any money, if only I could get him one seat.
I had a colleague apologetically ask me to please think of her son if somebody was sick and had to forgo their ticket at the last minute. The Australian Hamilton producer, Michael Cassel, was approached outside his hotel by strangers on the morning of the event, tearfully begging him to get them in. That's how deep the fans' emotional connection is to Hamilton and the man who created it.
Why is Hamilton so popular?
I noticed two distinct reactions when I mentioned to people that I was interviewing Lin-Manuel Miranda. The first was blankness, the person having zero idea who he was. The other was an almost religious level of joy and devotion. It seems that once you've come across Lin-Manuel Miranda, you are likely to be not just a fan, but to be in awe.
If you google Hamilton, the first suggested question that appears is: "What is Hamilton about and why is it so popular?"
Hamilton opened on Broadway in 2015. Miranda had spent seven years writing it, after reading the 2004 book Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. He made the inspired choice to cast non-white actors to play all the roles except King George, giving the show great dynamism and originality.
Lyrically, Hamilton is partly sung and partly rapped and it has a complexity of internal rhyme and cleverness of language that is mind-boggling. For example, take this riff inspired by the most famous verse from The Pirates of Penzance. The original is:
I am the very model of a modern major general
I'm information vegetable, animal and mineral
In the Hamilton song Right Hand Man, George Washington raps:
Now I'm the very model of a modern major general
The venerated Virginian veteran whose men are all
Musically, the score surely includes some of the most insidiously sticky music hooks ever written. The songs are almost disturbing in their ability to create ear worms that burrow into your brain for days.
It's now almost two weeks since I prepped for the interview and listened repeatedly to the soundtrack and I still wake up every day with Hamilton songs racing through my head.
The music draws influences from rap, R&B, soul, pop and musical theatre. It relies on counterpoint and repetition of themes throughout the work to build a cohesive whole. As with the lyrics, the degree of musical complexity is gobsmacking.
Then you've got the content itself: the compelling tale of a young penniless immigrant, Alexander Hamilton, who moves to the US, fights in the American Revolution against the British. Through the sheer force of his will and intellect, Hamilton works his way up to become US Treasury Secretary, setting up the basis of financial system that's largely in use to this day.
The narrative of the musical is built around the rivalry between Hamilton and one of his contemporaries, Aaron Burr.
Not even COVID could stop its success
Hamilton was an immediate smash hit the second it opened. It won 11 Tony awards from a record 16 nominations, a Grammy for the cast recording and the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
It won seven Olivier awards when it opened on London's West End in 2017. Disney+ filmed the Broadway version and it aired during the COVID pandemic in 2020, allowing millions of people to watch it globally.
Lin-Manuel Miranda himself also has Academy Award nominations for animated film soundtracks including Moana and Encanto.
Hamilton opened in Australia in 2021 but due to COVID, Miranda was unable to attend. The musical had to shut down for a period when NSW went into lockdown, but other than that brief window, it has played continuously since to sell-out audiences.
At one time, Australia was the only place in the world where Hamilton was still playing, with Broadway and West End closed down. In early March 2023, Lin-Manuel Miranda was able to make it here and attended the Brisbane production.
He also snuck in a quick visit to the Fortitude Valley studio where the animated children's series Bluey is created (Miranda voiced Major Tom, Bluey's horse, in the most recent series).
I went to the studio at the same time, as I also voice two characters in Bluey (Ice-Cream Lady and Coco's Mum).
The man is non-stop!
One of the things that was so striking, spending 24-or-so hours observing Lin-Manuel Miranda at close quarters, was how unbelievably generous he was to every person around him. He took his time going from desk to desk at Ludo Studios, chatting to everyone individually about what they do and joyfully snapping photographs to show his children.
He sat down with the crew in their break room and watched two episodes. I don't think there was a second where somebody wasn't taking a photo of him or asking for a selfie, and he could not have been warmer or more gracious, despite having stepped off his 21-hour flight from New York only a few hours earlier.
Then, that night, he showed up at Brisbane's Lyric Theatre, watched the entire show from the audience, joined the Hamilton cast for the curtain call and spoke to the crowd (who went completely nuts).
Immediately after that, he was at the cast party where he again posed for dozens of photographs in the most charming and accommodating way. The following morning, he was cheerful and warm to everyone backstage as we waited to do our interview, and then he was entertaining and delightful on stage.
It was astonishing to watch the man's energy up close and to see how giving he was to everyone in his orbit who asked for something from him.
Fans of Hamilton know there's a line in the musical that covers pretty much any occasion, and the one that appears most fitting for Lin-Manuel Miranda himself is most definitely: How to account for his rise to the top? Man, the man is non-stop!
In The Room: Leigh Sales & Lin-Manuel Miranda is available to stream on iView from 6pm on Saturday March 18. It will also be broadcast on ABC TV at that time and again at 10pm on Tuesday March 21.
