But, soon enough, we’re on to matters of the heart. Of course, the “sequel,” in the form of the Nineteenth Amendment, wouldn’t come for another hundred and forty-four years. After sampling the newly written Declaration of Independence-“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”-Angelica raps:Īnd when I meet Thomas Jefferson … I’m a compel him to include women in the sequel!Īs Angelica, the incandescent Goldsberry makes it clear that she could rap Jefferson under the table if she got the chance: all that holds her back is a woman’s place in the world. In Miranda’s version, they look like society women in bustles but sound like a Destiny’s Child-esque R. The three actresses appear early in Act One, as the Schuyler sisters, Angelica, Eliza, and Peggy: daughters of Philip Schuyler, the Revolutionary War general and later U.S. In a musical about Founding Fathers, Miranda has placed a pair of vividly imagined female characters, played by the dynamite performers Renée Elise Goldsberry and Phillipa Soo, with an assist from Jasmine Cephas Jones. The musical is also about history and how it gets told-in Miranda’s refrain, “who lives, who dies, who tells your story.” That, most often, is where the women come in, and they come in strong. It’s fitting that the musical opened on the same night as the first Republican primary debate: ten men who desperately need to bust a rhyme. There’s some strange comfort, in this age of Washington gridlock, in seeing the birth of the nation recast as a series of rap battles straight out of “8 Mile,” with Hamilton, Jefferson, and Burr's egos clashing as sharply as their ideals. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s rightfully lauded hip-hop musical “Hamilton,” which has just opened on Broadway after a smash run at the Public, is about many things, among them men: how they fight, write, rule, and duel.
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