I am Not Throwing Away My Shot

So… I saw Hamilton.

Love is kind of weak a term to ascribe to my feelings for last Tuesday night’s Chicago performance. **I’ve been MIA due to family being in town for a funeral, in case you were wondering… You can breathe now.

My kids had been sending me YouTube clips of Epic Rap Battles with Obama vs Romney and Einstein vs Hawking and Newton vs Nye for a long time. Like years. And they are crazy fun!

But one day my oldest sent me a song that she said was her new favorite, furthermore, she said she’d been playing the soundtrack on repeat for days. As a parent, I think it’s a rare gift when your college kid shares something they love with you, so I paid attention. When she told me I’d love the album, I didn’t doubt her assessment. I want to enjoy the things my kids enjoy, at the very least, I want to understand what they’re so excited about. For Hamilton, after I struggled through the first song, I ‘got’ the style of the show. And she was right. I loved it.

We’d been listening to the show for over a year when we heard Hamilton was coming to the Chi for an extended run, so we waited for tickets to go on sale. Price point? Ridiculous. And the show was sold out for about six months almost immediately. THEN!  A same-day lottery was set up for folks to see the show for $10 a ticket. Cool beans, right?

Well, I have entered that contest almost every day for nearly four months, my heart sinking with every “Daphne, unfortunately…” message. Then last Tuesday, when I was fighting a stomach bug instead of working my church’s food pantry while trying to clean my house and wrap my mind around a close death in the family and all the stress of that, I entered the daily drawing knowing I wouldn’t win…again.

A few hours later my email pinged, and there was my name again in the email body from Broadway Direct Lottery, but ‘unfortunately’ didn’t follow. I’d won! I almost wrecked my car when I tried to pull back into traffic after sending my husband an all-caps text. Tears pricked my eyes, oxygen struggled to reach my brain. I was pretty close to passing out from the news.

After I composed myself and got to my destination, I called and texted and called and texted my daughter since she was the one who turned me on to the show in the first place. Well, I caught up with her, and we had an amazing night. The show was just…beyond words (and just the distraction we needed from all the funeral business). I didn’t have any real concept of how the set would look, but I’d absorbed the Broadway soundtrack, and just wasn’t sure how a Chicago company could measure up.

Somebody should have told me to shut up and quit fronting like I knew what the heck I was even talking about. The Chicago cast is, in my not-so-professional opinion as good, and in some cases, better than the original Broadway cast that I listened to. I thought Miguel Cervantes’s turn as Alexander Hamilton was vocally stronger than Manuel’s recording. But adding to the strong performances, the physicality, the send up to ’80s and ’90s hip-hop culture, the call-and-response vibe of the script, and the genuine enthusiasm the cast seemed to radiate about the show made the production utterly smile-inducing and howl-worthy. They were speaking my language, and — OMG — Chris De’Sean Lee might just be my new favorite person. First, he was suave and cocksure as Lafayette, but his performance as a c-walking Thomas Jefferson had me nearly falling out of my seat every time. Not to mention Alexander Gemingnai as King George. Lawd! I could have listened to that cat roll his R’s all night. He played the crowd all the way to the back row (where I was sitting). His time on the stage was just too short. But my favorite-favorite-favorite part was how they all clowned Hamilton in the “Never Gon’ Be President Now” scene. I might have peed a little from laughing so hard at King George. But I was also digging the dirty South beats that had me unable to sit still. And Angelica, DAYUM. That girl can sang. Karen Olivio and Air Afsar sound so much like the soundtrack/original cast. I cannot say it enough: talent just poured off the stage.

Deep. Poetic. Hilarious. Velvety.  Bombastic. Addictive. Hamilton left me in awe. The stage was simple but genius, the ensemble cast was efficient and more than capable of handling the multiple hats they must wear. Sure, I was geeked to see Wayne Brady as Aaron Burr, sir. His acting prowess and vocal range totally shut my mouth about his sometimes hokey Whose Line is it Anyway days with this performance, although I did leave the theater saying “Is Wayne Brady gonna have to choke a bitch?” (min 2:23) for some reason.

As a creative, consuming art is vital to our existence. Create like you’re running out of time. Don’t throw away your shot to light a spark — you just might ignite a revolution.

Blessings, y’all.