فصل 27

XXvII

GIVING AN ACCOUNT OF A HURRICANE, with a Notable Appearance by PRESIDENT OBAMA and the Remarkable Rise of ANTHONY RAMOS

The hurricane hit on a hot monday in July. On the morning of Hamilton’s first Broadway preview, The New York Times ran a front-page story about the show. This followed two other Times stories over the previous weekend, and a photo spread of the cast in the new issue of Cosmopolitan, to say nothing of the dozens of stories in countless publications in the preceding few weeks.

All afternoon, eager theatergoers flooded the sidewalk outside the theater to enter the “Ham4Ham” lottery: a chance to win a $10 seat in the front row for that night’s performance. By the time the winning names were drawn, 697 people had entered. The crowd stretched most of the way to Eighth Avenue, and nearly shut down 46th Street.

For all the commotion outside the Rodgers, inside it felt like another day on the job. The contrast was weird, considering the buzz from the star-studded downtown run and the fact that six of the 21 actors were a few hours away from making their Broadway debuts. “I’ve never worked on a show where the stakes were so high and the temperature was so low,” marveled Nevin Steinberg.

That was largely because of the show’s director. In rehearsal that afternoon, as Andy ran the cast through the curtain call, Tommy kept up a stream of banter and in-jokes so everybody stayed loose. Directing, he believes, isn’t just giving notes to an actor after a scene. It’s the tone you set at every moment: “It ‘s what you say in a twominute elevator ride.” Before leaving his apartment that morning, he had thought about wearing a special outfit for Hamilton’s first night on Broadway but reverted to the usual untucked shirt and jeans. “This is what they’re used to,” he says, meaning the cast and production team. He wants to keep them calm. Of course, it’s also what he is used to. He needs to keep calm, too. A few days earlier, Jeffrey had offered a prediction of what would happen at the first preview. It wasn’t verbal, it was a gesture: He put his arms together, raised them skyward, then flared them apart, like a geyser going off. The prediction was also a goal. For just as directors steer actors and choreographers guide dancers, Broadway producers harness the public. They turn a show into an event, a phenomenon–or at least they try to. Sander Jacobs, who joined Jeffrey as a general partner on Hamilton, as he had been on In the Heights, had a good vantage point to watch him do it.Two decades earlier, he had been an investor in The Phantom of the Opera, a monumental hit that became the longest-running show of the time. As Hamilton barreled toward its first Broad-way performance on July 13, he thought: I have never seen a reception like this.

At half past seven on that hot Monday night, the lobby staff pulled open the doors of the Richard Rodgers, and the hurricane swept in.

“Oh look!” cried a tall man in a suit. “They’ve got the trinkets!” They did indeed have the trinkets. The audience crowded the merchandise counters so thickly that the ushers had to scream at them to keep moving.

The theatergoers who attend first previews tend to boisterous. “They’re the people who have the date circled in blood on their calendars,” Tommy told the cast. But the reaction that night surprised even him. The audience screamed when Lac’s curly hair appeared at the conductor’s stand. They screamed again when the house lights dimmed, and screamed some more when Leslie sauntered onstage to begin the opening number. When Lin made his first entrance, the roar stopped the song for 18 seconds.

The show felt like it lasted six hours that night. After the cuts during rehearsals, it was tighter, sharper, and a few minutes shorter than it had been at the Public, but the peaks and valleys of the audience’s reaction still made it an ordeal for the cast. When it ended, they congregated onstage as if they’d just survived something. Jasmine was crying; Renée looked dazed. A career in noisy rap clubs hadn’t prepared Daveed for what he’d been through: “I heard H–’ and then nothing. My computer overloaded.” He had spent the first three numbers wondering if he would be able to finish the show. Pippa said she was so scared during the opening song that “I was drinking my own tears.”

The next day (and every other day throughout previews), Tommy held a company meeting in the empty theater. Rookies and veterans alike talked about the overwhelming energy they had felt the night before. The most emotional response came from Anthony Ramos.

“Nobody’s ever done that before,” he said, gesturing toward the stage. “We gotta rise up. We gotta fuckin’ do it.” He got a little choked up. “I don’t know about y’all, but it’s been a long to road to get here. A long road.”

At 24, Anthony is the youngest person in the cast. You might expect his more experienced castmates to scoff at what he said. In fact, they were moved: Groff would later call this “the day Anthony had everybody in tears.”

Anthony hadn’t spent as much time getting to Broadway as other people, but his road might have been the hardest.

Anthony grew up in a housing project in Bushwick, a rough part of Brooklyn, where he played baseball and sang with his friends. In high school, he auditioned for the school talent show, realizing only after he had been chosen to play the lead that he had actually tried out for the school musical. He liked it enough to want to keep performing, but paying for training was out of the question.

When he got into the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, Sara Steinweiss, a staff member at his high school–“an angel in my life,” Anthony says–got him an interview with the Jerry Seinfeld Scholarship Program. “I actually said, All I need is one shot. All I need is someone to believe in me. And I won’t let you down. My grades are not a reflection of who I am.’” He got the scholarship.

After AMDA, he pieced together gigs, went to open auditions, and struggled: When Lin and Tommy called him back again and again but decided not to cast him for a tour of In the Heights, he was crushed. Three years later, he still didn’t have an agent or manager. But a casting agent who saw him audition for a different show suggested that he try out for Hamilton.

“In the final callback, I was doing My Shot,’ and I wasn’t acting,” Anthony says. “When I was singing, I’m not throwing away my shot,’ I could’ve exploded–I felt like a bomb inside me just went off that day.”

He learned that he had been cast as John Laurens and Philip Hamilton, two fortunate sons who died tragically young in gunfights. Anthony can relate to that. When he first heard Lin rap, “See I never thought I’d live past twenty,” it reminded him of home. “That’s how a lot of people in my neighborhood think. A lot of them didn’t live past 21.” Tommy watched Anthony imbue both of his characters with “an awareness of the randomness of who gets out and who doesn’t. He’s seen a lot of things that he wishes he hadn’t seen.”

Anthony’s mix of gentleness and persistence lends force to “Blow Us All Away” and “Stay Alive,” a pair of songs that routinely wreck the audience. Philip chalenges one of his father’s critics to a duel, even though he doesn’t know how to fight, and doesn’t want to. “I’ve fought for things in life,” Anthony says. “I learned how to chosen grind and hustle, but I was never a kid who was ready to fight all the time, you know what I’m saying?”

His preparation for those scenes is pretty simple: He imagines how he would feel in that situation. He thinks of how scared he would be to look around and see no way out. It’s easy to do.

Four days af ter anthony spoke at the company meeting, the hurricane hit again, but stronger. On the afternoon of Saturday, July 18, the block was barricaded at both ends. When the house lights dimmed, President Obama walked into the theater. Everybody cheered; dozens of cameras flashed.

At intermission, the fire curtain rolled down, dividing the audience from the stage. The company assembled on the set and the president walked out to greet them.

“It’s really good!” Obama said. “Sometimes it takes a while until people know something is good. Here, people know.”

After a big group photo, Obama said hello to Lin’s dad and kissed Lin’s mom on the cheek. He beamed when he looked up and saw Rocco Landesman, who had run the National Endowment for the Arts in Obama’s first term.

“You’re not running out the clock,” said Rocco.

“No, man. I’ve got things to do,” the president replied.

Then, loud enough for the whole company to hear, he said: “I’ve got to take my shot.”

On his way offstage, the president shook hands with Lin and said, “I’m proud of you, man.” (In a gesture of self-restraint, Lin had stuck to the performance calendar they had announced before learning that President Obama was coming, the one that said Javier Muٌoz would play Hamilton that afternoon.)

Before disappearing into the wings, President Obama veered a half-step out of his way so he could grab one more hand.

“You’re really gifted,” he told Anthony Ramos.