My Hopeful Prediction for Daveed Diggs As He Departs Hamilton in NYC

Today is Daveed Diggs' last day with the cast of Hamilton in the New York production. Here's my hopeful prediction:

Daveed will take several months off, and then join the cast for Hamilton's run in San Francisco and LA next Spring and Summer.

Daveed is Miles' favorite person in the show. Daveed's dual parts (General Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson) have captivated Miles he listens for the nuances in each of Daveed's lines: the funny ways Daveed pronounces certain words (like whiskey), the way he punctuates his line to the State of Virginia by blowing a kiss, and his dazzling raps among other distinctly Diggsian touches. When Miles and his friend Ari audiotaped themselves doing the first Hamilton and Jefferson rap battle from the show, Miles played Jefferson.

It turns out we have a connection with Daveed Diggs through James Lick Middle School. Until 2012 or so, Daveed was teaching a Spoken Word afterschool program at the school, and although he and Miles didn't overlap, we knew that the teacher who had been Daveed's main contact at the school, had also been a favorite teacher of Miles. (Miss Hacker had sent me a picture of herself backstage with Daveed taken last summer - with Vice President Joe Biden in the background!)

On our second night hanging at the stage door at the Richard Rogers, Daveed Diggs came out and proceeded to make his way through the gauntlet of fans, signing several hundred autographs. Miles had left his $2 bill in the hotel room so we weren't seeking an autograph but he inched through the crowd and as Daveed got close Miles said  "I'm from James Lick Middle School!" Daveed stopped.  He looked at Miles, smiled his giant smile, and running his hand through his bushy locks, said "You're from James Lick? Shiiit!"

"I graduated Tuesday," Miles told him. "Miss Hacker was my 7th grade English teacher."

The interaction seemed to connect Daveed back to the Bay Area for a moment bringing in a sense of familiarity, a kid from James Lick? "What? you know Miss Hacker?  Say hi to her for me! Where are you going to High School?" Daveed took a break from the intensity of signing and chatted with Miles while the throngs of people around us waited and wondered.

Later that week we remembered the $2 bill and inched through the crowd again for the signature.

See Daveed Diggs, as super Dapper Dude in this Esquire article from May.  http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a45240/daveed-diggs-profile-hamilton/

No Words Needed during Final Bow of Hamilton Leads

In a musical production lauded for its masterful use of words, lead actors Lin-Manuel Miranda, Philippa Soo and Leslie Odom Jr. gave a heartfelt nonverbal goodbye last night in New York as each departs Hamilton the Musical.

The following article describes the final curtain call of Miranda, Odom and Soo.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/theater/2016/07/10/hamilton-lin-manuel-miranda-final-performance-leslie-odom-jr-phillipa-soo/86914592/

Lin-Manuel waved to fans from the balcony of the Richard Rogers Theater July 9th following his final (official) performance.

Here is the video of the curtain call.  Listen closely for when the theme from The West Wing starts playing.  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OER_9NEXo_c

Hamilteens - It's A Thing

Miles was included in this Guardian article about teen fans of Hamilton.  He's in the paragraph toward the bottom, after the video Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jimmy Fallon.



Hamilton's teenage superfans - "This is like crazy cool."
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/jun/22/hamilton-teenage-superfans-this-is-like-crazy-cool

I refer you to this piece on the Tonys, and the beautiful words of Lin-Manuel related to the Orlando crisis.



http://www.npr.org/sections/monkeysee/2016/06/13/481471389/on-a-dark-day-the-tonys-double-down-on-joy-and-pride

Make It Bigger!

Tonight is the Tony Awards, being called by some the Hamiltony's because of the record breaking 16 nominations Hamilton received. If it wins in every category it was nominated in the show could break the record of 12 Tonys held by The Producers, however the most they can win is 13 because of multiple Hamilton nominees in the male lead and featured male categories. Predicting Leslie Odom Jr for best lead actor in a musical over Lin-Manuel Miranda - as I think voters will want to spread the love and Lin will already win for best musical, book and music, and Daveed Diggs for best featured actor. 

To get in the mood, and for the sheer, bighearted glee of it, see the link below for the 2013 Tony opener. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=danBaPWT09A

In 2011, Lin-Manuel Miranda sat backstage at the Tonys working on a rap for Neil Patrick Harris to deliver at the close of the show.  Here working on it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CR-sAit8LE

And then performed here where their creative collaboration and excellence gives way to a rocking show stopping close!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ocht_vicpc

There Is No Not Smiling When You Watch This

I only peripherally know who James Corden is.  He has a late night show which I have never seen. I don't know where James Corden came from. I mean, I don't know how he came to have a late night show. In any case, he is hosting the Tony Awards on Sunday night, and he apparently loves to sing and has a regular feature called Carpool Karaoke where he invites famous people to sing in the car with him (there are lots of these if you search them on YouTube.)

Here is a pre-Tony edition with some of the nominated stars from the Great White Way.

Come on - how.fun.is.this?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YshgmStEZh0


Watch the Tonys this Sunday night, June 12 at 8pm/7c, or I think you can watch it live online http://www.tonyawards.com/en_US/live/

My Dad, My Son, and the Parade of Musicals Between The Music Man and Hamilton

There was a time when it was embarrassing to say I loved musicals. In fact, it may have never before truly been cool to admit a love of musicals, until this moment right now. I have run in circles cooler than that. It was cool to travel around the world, not to vacation at Club Med (which I super happily did twice in my early 30s). It was cool to see U2, not Elton John and Billy Joel. (Actually, I saw Neil Diamond too, at age 27. Talk about uncool! But I sang along to every song.)

I love musicals, even when I don't even really like them (like Wicked. It just felt to me like it was trying too hard.) I love Guys and Dolls, and She Loves Me and Dream Girls.

I love old school musicals like Fiddler on the Roof, Camelot, West Side Story and My Fair Lady that I know from singing along to the original cast albums as a kid. (We sang along to a lot of Neil Diamond in my house too.) 

Last year, for my mom's birthday, Miles and I took her to see The Music Man at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts. At intermission, Mom made an admission I had never heard before. She said that my father had courted her with The Music Man soundtrack. What?! Leaning over to check on her when the lights came up - was she enjoying the high school production? - I found my mother unexpectedly happy and wistful. I had no idea there was history there.

While my parents were dating in the summer of 1959, my dad invited my mom up to a friend's apartment to listen to the original Broadway cast album from The Music Man. My father wooed my mother with Lida Rose!  Well, that's the song she specifically remembers him sharing, but when she mentioned it I immediately remembered that Lida Rose slips into the beautiful love song, Will I Ever Tell You, and ultimately ends in a lovely layered duet. There are some serious love songs on this album!  

From Till There Was You: 
There was love all around
But I never heard it singing
No, I never heard it at all
Till there was you!

I never knew this about my father - and yet it makes so much sense. Of course he loved this album! The Music Man is a story of optimism and hope and dreaming big. It's about love and family, community and Irish immigrants, pool halls and marching bands! I have no doubt my dad was head over heels in love in the summer of 1959, and as he was not easily demonstrative with words, The Music Man gave him the sentiments and the instrumentation he lacked.

Here from the original Broadway Cast Album are the Buffalo Bills and Barbara Cook singing Lida Rose and Will I Ever Tell You by Meridith Wilson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fbbB2gCStg&list=PLUSRfoOcUe4ZhcxS2yRNDmbpYR04K696T&index=15

Lida Rose 
Lida Rose, I'm home again, Rose
To get the sun back in the sky.
Lida Rose, I'm home again, Rose
About a thousand kisses shy.
Ding dong ding
I can hear the chapel bell chime.
Ding dong ding
At the least suggestion I'll pop the question.
Lida Rose, I'm home again, Rose
Without a sweetheart to my name.
Lida Rose, now everyone knows
That I am hoping you're the same
So here is my love song, not fancy or fine
Lida Rose, oh won't you be mine
Lida Rose, oh Lida Rose oh Lida Rose.

Will I Ever Tell You 
Dream of now, dream of then.
Dream of a love song that might have been.
Do I love you?
Oh, yes, I love you.
And I'll bravely tell you
But only when we dream again.
Sweet and low, sweet and low,
How sweet that mem'ry how long ago
Forever?
Oh, yes forever.
Will I ever tell you?
Ah-- no.

Having both Wikipedia and YouTube at my fingertips I learned that in 1958 The Music Man was a "whopping hit" winning five Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Actor. Its original cast album won the very first Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. Hamilton won the most recent Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album, and with 16 Tony nominations, is sure to win Best Musical and a slew of other Tonys on June 12th.

How wonderful it would be if my dad could see that his grandson is also swept away by the music in musical theater. Who knew that my love of musicals stretches forward and back in time through my father and my son.

Miles has a personal tradition of wearing costumes and wacky clothes the last week of school. As I dropped him off at school the day before he graduated, dressed as a doughnut, with a grey felt top hat, I thought of how remarkably brave he was. A 14 year old boy, wearing a doughnut costume and top hat to his big city public middle school. 

"Oh Miles! The doughnut!" I heard kids yell smiling as he climbed the front steps of the school. This kid must know who he is, I thought. This kid is trusting his instinct.

It turns out I have a love of marching bands and, thinking about my dad and The Music Man, I wonder if that's how it came about. When we wrote our "senior quotes" to be included under our formal portraits in our final high school yearbook, one of my "likes" was marching bands. I was Senior Class Vice President, a carefree, constantly smiling, non-instrument-playing teenager, saying in print that I liked marching bands. This was not cool, but it was true and it was me.  

I am looking at the threads of connection here, from my dad, to me, to Miles; threads of exuberant optimism that so typify the man my dad was, moments of goofiness, or not really giving (that much of) a damn. From a young Irish-American man wooing a pretty Italian-American girl with songs from a Broadway show they would never see, to his grandson almost 60 years later dressed as a doughnut as he walks into school. And me too, at 17 publicly acknowledging my love of marching bands, and choosing a cheesy, yet resonating Styx lyric in my senior yearbook quote! Oh I was so aware of how uncool that was at the time!

I don't think any of us always acts on our truest impulses and desires, but at best we are most of the time marching to the beat of our own drum. And ideally, it's a snare.

1.  

In The Room Where It Happens

I am feeling extremely grateful and fortunate that Miles and I got to see Hamilton on Broadway, and with this cast, led by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Exuberant, inspiring, exciting as hell.

I feel like we have been a part of something big, and unforgettable. A moment in time never to be repeated in the same way, captured in our minds and hearts and our shared experience of that night.

Miles whispered to me after three or four songs "My mouth is moving involuntarily!" It can't be helped!

The last time I was an uber fan was in the summer of 1994 when Melisa Lasell, Laurie Bramel and I, with a rotation of other Chico State friends, obsessed over Prince's newly released Purple Rain album. That winter, I was tasked to get 4 tickets to the concert and Judy Stalker and I spent the night outside Record Factory in Walnut Creek. Sometimes you just have to do it! That night was eventful and fun, and that concert remains the most memorable one of my life, and all the more precious in my memory now with Prince's early death. I feel extremely grateful and fortunate that I saw him during the Purple Rain tour, in all his strutting, sexy, purple glory. 

Hamilton: the show, the music, the choreography is so layered and active, of course, that immediately I wished I could see it again. And again! To see how they do it, to hear the songs live and hear the audience fill the great room with applause and cheers after every number. 

It would be enough. This will have to be enough.

 (Until it comes to San Francisco!)

TONIGHT!

After (intermittently) loitering like crazy people outside the Richard Rogers the last few days, tonight is the night!

Best Wedding Toast Ever

A couple years ago I fell in love with the video of a father and son-in-law surprising the bride with a terrific rendition of To Life from Fiddler on the Roof. The whole thing tickled me: the idea, the execution, the vibrancy, the sheer fun of a great creative collaboration! 

"He's in theater" I was told by whoever had shared the video. I didn't know who he was. I shared that video with a lot of people.

A couple months ago I put two and two together. That's Lin-Manuel Miranda!

I have a feeling you'll love to too.

(Oh and keep your eye out for Chris Jackson, the tall, bald African-American man who plays George Washington in Hamilton. He's in the ensemble here...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgZ4ZTTfKO8 

Fraunces Tavern

Recently, hearing we were off on a sort of Hamilton pilgrimage, a friend mentioned that we should go to Fraunces Tavern, which I had never heard of. A working tavern dating back to the American Revolution it was the site where Washington bid farewell to his officers in 1783.

We went to Fraunces Tavern yesterday 

as part of our outing to Trinity Church where Hamilton is buried.

Miles reading the Federalist Papers on his phone (ha ha).

Pub fare: stout and fish and chips with smashed peas.

This morning, reading some of Hamilton, The Revolution, about how the stage show came to be, I saw a stage direction at the bottom of the song Aaron Burr, Sir. It said "They enter Fraunces Tavern..."(!!!)

See below in the second photo, as well as the footnote at bottom right on the page.

Cheers to that.

In The Greatest City In The World, Wherein We Become Groupies (or Stalkers), Part 1

After the first night in front of the stage door where only two main actors came out, we loitered near the main theater doors last night.  After a series of limos/ black livery cars left, a single black car remained in front and I assumed it was for Lin. WIth only a few people in front (and over 100 near the stage door) nearly every actor exited from the main and immediately adjacent doors. Lin-Manuel Miranda literally ran out the theater doors and leapt into the car.  We got looks and waves from him as if to say "I'm sorry I have to do this.  I would have no life if I didn't do this!"

 

Daveed Diggs arriving for Friday night's performance.

Alex Lacamoire, the musical director, diving for the open door.

Leslie Odom Jr, who plays Aaron Burr. Odom is nominated for Best Actor in a Musical against Lin-Manuel Miranda, and may well win. 

Okieriete Onaidowan (Oak) who plays Mulligan the revolutionary in Act I and James Madison in Act II.

The incredibly handsome Christopher Jackson who plays George Washington.  He is signing Miles' one dollar bill here. It is very hard for me not to think of Washington as looking like this now.

Phillippa Soo who plays Hamilton's wife, Eliza. She has a chance to win the best actress in a musical Tony Award because her part has so much breadth (life, love, loss.)

Wait For It - In Which Miles Learns We'll See Hamilton In NYC

I was very excited to tell Miles I had bought the tickets for us to see Hamilton in New York. At 7:30 the next morning, I sat on his bed to wake him up. 

"Miles. Wake up now," I murmured exactly as I had when he was a wee laddie. As he began to stir, he suddenly sat up and told me, "I had two dreams last night that I saw Hamilton!" 

(Wow.)

"In both dreams I was with Dad, and we were sitting close to the stage. In the second one, Ari and Darius were in the show, in the ensemble. At one point they motioned to me to come on stage, so I put my top hat on the empty chair beside me. Like there would be an empty chair beside me!" he said laughing. "And I joined in with the ensemble."

"I bought tickets." I said.

He let this register for a minute and then said in a measured tone, "You bought tickets?"

"Yeah."

"We're going to New York?"

"Yeah."

Miles is not a jump up and down, scream and run through the house kind of kid. So he didn't jump up and down, scream and run through the house. His fixed brow and darting eyes told me his mind was at work...we were going to New York, we were going to see Hamilton, we were going to see (nearly) the entire original cast.

"When?" he asked.

"Right after graduation," I said. "You graduate on Tuesday, May 24th, and we'll fly that Thursday and see it on the 31st."

"Cool," he said.

Super Cool.

Lin at the White House, and Making the Decision To Go to New York

For any non initiates, I think the following video, shot at a Spoken Word performance at the White House in 2009, is an excellent place to start. This clip shows an early version of Hamilton, the opening song, an early version of the vision - at this point just planned to be a set of songs making up a "mixtape".

Just like the Obamas and others in the audience watching, you can witness for yourself that there is something incredibly unique and bizarre and compelling going on here. it is evident that Lin-Manuel Miranda is a force to be reckoned with. Like Alexander Hamilton himself apparently was.

Lin-Manuel Miranda performs at the White House 2009.

http://youtu.be/WNFf7nMIGnE

When Miles and I returned home from my niece's birthday party in April, we once again sat side by side at the computer. Miles held his iPhone playing the soundtrack while we looked for articles or videos we hadn't yet seen. 

Suddenly he paused the playing song and said "It makes me really sad to think that next year when Hamilton comes to San Francisco, Lin-Manuel won't be with them. None of them will." His head was bent looking down at the iPhone in his hand, his voice sounded as if he might begin to cry.

"That's right," I said softly. "The original cast does not tour with the show." 

We sat there for a minute, in silence, as Miles got used to this newly realized reality, and I began to create a different one.  It was this cast Miles knew, this cast that was making history on Broadway. It was this cast that drove Miles to choose "singing" as his first choice elective next year ("These guys have so much range. When I sing along I can't reach the same notes.  I want to be a better singer.")

We had to go to New York.

One can rationalize a lot of different things. This was a moment in time, I told myself, a musical captivating my musical son, a moment on the cusp of Miles becoming a surly teenager where he might not want to go on vacation with his mom. Miles was about to graduate from 8th grade so the trip and the show could be a graduation present. It could be a pat on the back for getting into the fine High School he was selected to for the Fall. A neighbor family had just started having Miles babysit so he could earn some of the money to contribute. He and Frank were planning a sidewalk sale where he could sell old toys and games. He might get some money for graduating as well. Could Miles be talked into a crowd funding plea to friends and family?! (The answer there was no. When the question was posed to him he said "why would anyone want to give me money to see Hamilton?") 

I had been trying to get back to New York for six years - this would be a great reason to do it!

Question: If one blows nearly the whole vacation budget on theater tickets, how cheaply can one "do" New York? We'd have to see.

After Miles went to bed I looked again at the date I had considered, Tuesday May 31st, 2016. Miles would graduate on May 24th and we could fly to New York on the 26th. I had an airline credit that had to be used by August - that would help.

I selected the least expensive (ha!) tickets that weren't all the way in the nosebleed section, in the last row in the mezzanine, stage right (equivalent to about row Q, but up a level.) Feeling a moment of panic at this extremely extravagant move, I bought two tickets. 

One can rationalize a lot of different things.

And Just Like That, Hamilton the Musical Came Into Our Lives

"What's he doing?" My sister asked. 

With earbuds in place, my son Miles was wandering her house, roaming in and out of rooms in a trance, in his own world. Was he muttering? Rapping? Singing? 

I look over at him, hoodie up, head and shoulders bobbing, his hand holding an iPhone 6. 

"It's Hamilton." I tell her.

"Hamilton?" Asks my other sister scooping one of her twin one year olds up and wiping her nose. 

I know that mine is not the only teenager taken over by the new musical Hamilton, which opened on Broadway last August after a several month run at New York's Public Theater, but taken over he is.

We had listened to the musical's soundtrack on the hour drive from San Francisco to Novato for my niece Savannah's birthday party, with Miles' iPhone perched on the armrest between us. He paused the songs at moments while shouting to his grandmother in the back seat about what is going on in the show, in the story, at that moment. Mom is hearing impaired, and the lyrics are rapid-fire, clever - hard to understand on the first go, even when not in a car, and when not hard of hearing. My mom wants to relate, and connect with her grandson on his new love but now is not the right time. We all agree he will show her the lyrics while they listen together another time.

Miles' obsession had started a month before when at the tail run of an original school musical he was in, a friend had turned him onto a couple songs from Hamilton. He came home and introduced me, via YouTube, to King George singing about the American revolutionaries breaking free of England. Styled like an old British pop song, You'll Be Back is a breakup song with tinges of possessiveness, control, despair. With some monarchical twists: "I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love..."

Miles moved on to the opening song, Hamilton, memorizing those lyrics (as did I soon afterwards. One can't really help oneself.)

"How does a bastard orphan, son of a whore 

and a Scotsman dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot 

in the Caribbean, by providence, impoverished and squalor 

grow up to be a hero and a scholar...?"

A few days later Miles told me he had downloaded the entire cast album - 46 songs.

During non-school hours, Miles carried his iPhone around with him, listening, steeping in the words, the rhymes, the infectious energy. He followed me around as I washed dishes, put things away, folded laundry, the iPhone playing in his upright palm. Stopping the song periodically he would keep me up to speed, "this is when Thomas Jefferson has just gotten back from France," he tells me, hitting play again. Thomas Jefferson in France? Obviously, I am not up on my American history.

The immersion in All-Things-Hamilton continued as Miles sought out YouTube videos, cast appearances on late night talk shows, articles, and Wikipedia entries about the American Revolution. (I have been amazed and delighted about this new obsession, now nearly three months old. Music, musical theater, American history. It's gotten him off the XBox! Mostly.)

Like any good album propels its listeners to do, Miles has moved from song to song, getting hooked for days on a given track, developing new favorites, doubling back. King George was his entree to the show, but each and every song is captivating, intricate, compelling (I am hooked now as well, and his father is too. Picking me up one day to go collect Miles, Frank had the soundtrack playing in his car. We both own a copy of the double CD on Miles' insistence. When Miles got in the car he was surprised to find that his parents were listening to it on our own!)

We began to look for tickets to see the show in New York. What would it take to do it? What would it cost? Seeing the prices, I would back off. it's impossible, I would think. The show is long sold out and tickets, while available via a secondary market still sold through Ticketmaster, are insanely priced. We'll wait for its run in San Francisco, we say, and I begin to figure out how we'll even get tickets then. We didn't get to see Book of Mormon until its third visit to San Francisco. 

How patient can we be?