NEW YORK – "Hamilton," a play about one of America's founding fathers, is the hottest ticket on Broadway right now. Seats are sold out through most of 2016. It's attracted a long list of A-list celebrities and politicians. At the helm as musical director is one of South Florida's own.
The last time Alex Lacamoire and Lin-Manuel Miranda teamed up, they won four Tony awards for "In the Heights," including best musical and best orchestrations for Lacamoire.
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The Broadway show is a revolutionary musical about founding father Alexander Hamilton.
"This show is a love letter to a lot of things," said Miranda, who plays Hamilton. "It is a love letter to our country, it is a love letter to New York and it is a love letter to hip-hop."
Miranda was also a writer for the hip-hop musical explosion "Hamilton," which has created historical hysteria on the Great White Way.
"This show is about our country's first leaders, through the prism of the one immigrant among the founding fathers, but it is the precedent of everything that follows," said Miranda, who stumbled on a book about Hamilton five years ago.
He performed his first piece for the show for President Obama at a White House poetry slam in 2009.
Accompanying him on piano was Lacamoire, a Miami native who became the show's musical director.
"When I would tell people about the show, they would cock there head and say it's kind of cool," Lacamoire said. "And once they see it (they say), 'Whoaa.' And they are really blown away by it."
It's the hardest ticket to get. It's history with an urban beat and a very diverse cast bringing new audiences to Broadway and new listeners to rap music.
New Yorkers have gotten used to seeing presidential type motorcades outside the theater. It's a hit across party lines.
"Obama in an interview for the New York Times said, 'This show is the only thing Dick Cheney and I have ever agreed upon in our political career,'" Miranda said.
Even the music director had to stretch outside his classical roots to score a rap musical. Lacamoire worked with Miranda on his first show, "In the Heights." He is a graduate of New World School for the Arts.
"Washington talks about his right hand man," Miranda said. "(Lacamoire) is my musical right hand man. Every song I bring in gets better after working on it with (Lacamoire)."
"I enjoy being at the theater every night," Lacamoire said. "I enjoy hearing this music. I enjoy playing this music. I enjoy hearing the crowds."
"If you are political junkie, you will see the seeds of our political system in the show," Miranda said. "If you are a history junkie, we are as accurate as I can be and still manage to make things rhyme. If you are a hip-hop junkie, we have got references to so many eras of hip-hop throughout the show. And if you are a musical theater junkie, this is an old-fashioned musical."
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