Hamilton, at the Morrison Center

Or; Finally, to be in The Room Where It Happens

Way back in the abysm of time (August) I thought I was making a bitter mistake when I purchased tickets to see the touring production of Hamilton, an American Musical. It’s never going to compare with what you’ve built in your head, I told myself, your ear, trained by years of listening to Miranda and Jackson and Soo will reject whatever, doubles worthy, offerings the brave touring souls will sing. You are setting yourself up for failure, wasting hard-earned money, and exposing yourself to yet another press in the sticky global panini.

How glad I was though that I ignored my doubts and took my mother to the theater.

It’s true the performances are very different from the ones you’d find streaming on Disney Plus. Julius Thomas III (Hamilton) and Darnell Abraham (Washington), have more classically trialed voices (the former a pure, choirboy’s tenor the latter a basso profound) Jefferson (Paris Nix) opens to be more showy than snide.

But Hamilton works because it’s an objectively good show. It’s just elegant, in the midst of all its extravagance. And the lyrical beauty is mirrored, in a way only apparent in a live production, in the staging.

There is a flow to the company, ebbing and surging around the open bricked stage with its hidden recess and spinning floors, that is everything an ensemble ought to be. Their movements take the best of modern dance to embody ideas or states or objects or conditions, from the forward lift of spectators on the streets to a hung over, inhuman hump of a corpse, without any of the silliness of direct presentation. The ensemble is used so well, by both script and director, and full of prowess: lifts and leaps (and one actor rolling himself across the entirety of the stage.)

Nothing is silly, but for all its precision the show still has moments of crackle. Thomas is the head of all these, breaking out into tiny triumphant dances at such moments occasions as his proposal or going to the Constitutional Convention. A true human moment, doubtless planned to the nines but still grin inducing, is Aaron Burr (Donald Webber Jr.) thrown by the presence of King George III (Rick Negron) sitting in on the 4th act.

Webber is the standout of the cast, with Burr’s reserve fitting him like a glove. Musicals are not known as good environments for subtlety, but Webber manages, in the minor pushes to keep the whole globe spinning, to project the ever humming intensity to the back row. And of course its when his reserve breaks we see Webber at his full power: in the splendor of “The Room Where It Happens” when he incorporates himself into the ensembles physical magic, and the final desolation of “The World Was Wide Enough.”

The crowds and glints and armed security around the Morrison Center not to mention six years of hype and buzz make a gnarled shell around the experience, seemingly more than the sum of what it protects. But Hamilton lives up to all expectations, summons laughter from jokes you’ve heard a score of times, tears when you know exactly what’s coming. And it has that particular magic that cannot be captured anywhere but in the room.