Hamilton, he says, was a “prototypical hip-hop star”, born poor in the Caribbean and writing his way out of the island, conjuring success with only his wit, words and lived experience as tools.Īnd just as Manuel’s lived experience colours his reimagining of Hamilton’s story, so too its Australian-based cast have sprinkled “local flavours … into the sauce”.

“Daveed Diggs loves telling the story of being like: ‘bro, it’s the worst idea I ever heard – I’m in.”īut Manuel believed Hamilton’s story was “uniquely suited” to continue the work he began in his first musical, In the Heights – set in a largely Dominican neighbourhood in contemporary New York – of bringing hip-hop into musical theatre. “It certainly looks bad on paper,” Manuel says before quoting the African American rapper who won a Tony for his dual role as Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton. Is Manuel ever surprised that a musical about Alexander Hamilton – the first US secretary of the treasury and another old “white dude” on a dollar bill – could generate such hysteria and resonate so strongly in Brisbane in the year 2023? skip past newsletter promotion An air of Beatlemania hung heavy around the Queensland Performing Arts Centre. Teenagers screamed and sobbed in his presence. He only needed to enter the Lyric on Saturday night to watch Hamilton – the first and only time he would watch the production in Australia – to receive a standing ovation.Īt the show’s close he was at centre stage receiving yet more rapture, crowds lurked in corridors and by car park entrances trying to steal a glance and, perhaps, even a signature.Īt the afterparty, a dancefloor materialised around Manuel immediately upon his entry, despite the fact the rapper, playwright, pianist and actor freely admits his dancing abilities don’t reach the heights of his other many, prodigious talents. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundupīrisbane, it seems, knew plenty about Miranda, however. “I see the trees from Bluey everywhere here!” he tells Guardian Australia from his hotel room in South Bank.

Two lines and I’ll never top it.”Īsked if he “went method”, Miranda replied that he was “in the field for days”.Ĭlearly the experience left a lasting impression on the Puerto Rican New Yorker, whose preconceived ideas of the Queensland capital were entirely “two-dimensional”. “Excuse me,” Miranda said with mock indignation.

Miranda lin manuel