Liars and Saints

 More on Lin-Manuel Miranda's debt to "Sweeney Todd." Both shows open with a "ballad" to narrate the hero's journey from year zero to (approximately) year twenty. Both of these ballads also end with the arrival of a ship "in the harbor."  Additionally, LMM and Sondheim explore the possibilities of a "duet." In "Hamilton," Seabury explains why the colonists should not rebel against the Brits. ("Heed not the rebels who scream REVOLUTION..." "This Congress does not speak for me. They're playing a dangerous game. I pray the King shows you his mercy...") Hamilton takes Seabury's own words and twists them, perverting the meaning, creating a new argument: *"The REVOLUTION is comin'....." *"My  dog  speaks more eloquently..." *"The King? Is he in Jersey?" This recalls Sondheim's "Pretty Women"--a song from Act One of "Sweeney Todd." Here, Sweeney is so...

 Daniel Pollack-Pelzner is a nice person, and his new book is a bit *too* nice. For example: *Pollack-Pelzner describes the war within "Hamilton." The original cast wanted a tiny percent of the profits from the show. But the producer--Jeffrey Seller--held out. He held out for approximately seven months. Why? ....DPP describes the tension, but he seems hesitant to suggest that Seller was (quite simply) greedy. I've read Seller's memoir. It's not hard for me to imagine that Seller was simply greedy. Also, the 2015/16 cast is (to me) partly responsible for a major, irritating trend on Broadway--absenteeism. When I saw the show, literally every star but Rory O'Malley "phoned in sick." This was ludicrous. I think a tougher journalist might have explored the trend of absenteeism. What does a star owe to a show--even when the star is flirting with new possible Netflix deals? *DPP suggests it's a victory for women that Angelica has a rap solo. But the sh...

  I have tried to become a shusher. This is because of a novel called "Florence Gordon," about a woman who stands up for herself. In that novel, Florence observes a man cutting in a CVS line. She approaches him calmly and says, "You've upset all these people behind you. You don't take what is not yours, you don't touch anyone without permission, and you don't cut in line. It's called civilization." The key to shushing is to be deeply kind. You say, "I'm sorry, I'm just having trouble hearing the show...." Of course, you have nothing to be sorry about--but that's just a little slice of political fiction. It's a social lubricant. My greatest shushing moment occurred in "Kimberly Akimbo." I politely informed the man next to me that his phone really couldn't and shouldn't make any guest appearances in Act Two. Fortunately, Act Two is completely thrilling--so, even if my request had little staying power, the...

 I went back to see "Hamilton" this weekend -- my first time as a married man and father of children.  One thing that struck me is that Lin-Manuel Miranda isn't consistently interested in Eliza; he seems to try really, really hard, but, in Act Two, you can sometimes feel his pulse slowing to a crawl when he attempts to imagine this character's inner life. (Thus: the puzzling talk about "removing myself from the narrative," "putting myself back in the narrative." Who uses language in this way? If Miranda could try another draft, he might find more moments for Eliza that move beyond "tedious saint" writing.) I did think of Ann Leary's remarks on "Breaking Bad": "Vince Gilligan doesn't always know what to do with Skyler, so he just has her constantly applying hand cream. Again and again, the camera moves to Skyler, and we see her reaching for her jar of hand cream....") This isn't to say I lack love for "...

John Waters says, "If you are not obsessed, you are nothing." On that note, please recall that Lin-Manuel Miranda will be back in the public eye soon. He will be in "Mary Poppins Returns." (Who is excited for this film? Yours truly.) In honor of this major event, let's note some things about LMM: -Writers tend to have certain tics--and they return to these again and again. Take a look at "Everything I Know," from IN THE HEIGHTS. Put it up next to "Wait for It," from HAMILTON. Hmm... -In both cases, there's an inciting exchange. In IN THE HEIGHTS, someone hands Nina a photo album from her dead Abuela's possessions. In HAMILTON, the title character quizzes Burr about his girlfriend, Theodosia. -So: We start with something small. Nina pages through the photo album and sees images from the eighties; you can tell the era "by the volume of the women's hair." Abuela seems to be in every image; "if it happened on th...