ABOUT A MAN…WHO SPOKE WITH THUNDER FOR THIS NATION’S BIRTH…
(and transforming him into a pop-culture superstar for today’s generation…)

In this era where we seem totally surrounded by walking-dead zombies addicted to their iPad/iPhone screens in the palms of their hands, it’s gratifying to see that there are others of this high-tech generation who have more creative and productive perspectives in life.

Even more gratifying and intriguing is that a youthful and extremely talented team of writer/composer and director/producer, with an equally youthful and talented company of performers, came up with the inspired notion to produce a theatrical tour de force, based upon the magisterial and superlative biography by Ron Chernow of Hamilton…one of the more intriguing and complex personalities among the founders of this republic.

The show…Hamilton…has taken New York’s Broadway by storm…and then some…in a way not seen since – Jesus Christ Superstar –, – Hair -, and –Cats-. By taking his turbulent life’s story, about a man who spoke with thunder for this nation’s birth, and transforming him into a pop-culture superstar for today’s generation, they’ve humanized an almost mythologized icon of our Revolutionary War era, in a way even the most gifted historians couldn’t, and made it almost Shakespearean in quality and scope.

That generation of founders of this republic, were not gods, but simply men and women, with the same virtues, flaws, and follies, with which this world of ours abounds today. Thus, such a “humanizing” presentation of one of them makes what it accomplished even more relevant than ever for our understanding of what they went through to create this nation.

Historical “purists” are no doubt grumbling about how such a humanizing attempt borders on the blasphemous, but that’s their problem. We see it as epitomizing the essence of what made America…as a matrix of energy and innovation, combined with a faith of…optimism…as the driving force behind all of that history which has followed it to today.

The real miracle and exception about this American republic of ours is that it has managed to last this long, despite horrendous moments of near self-destruction, and irrational populist stampedes after one kind of “ism” or another. And yet, somehow, always managing to come to its senses, and return to a pragmatic state of economic, political, and social equilibrium. That is the delicate yet dynamic balance of its culture.

We can but hope it keeps on…keeping on.

CENTURION