Source : the age
Shortly after winning the titular role in the Australian production of Broadway smash Hamilton, Jason Arrow realised there was a problem.
In American history, Alexander Hamilton is a revolutionary hero. Strip that away and you’re left with a cocky, philandering bloke who – spoilers – ultimately overestimates himself.
Jason Arrow (right), Vidya Makan (centre) and Callan Purcell (left) will end their run in Hamilton when the show closes this month.Credit: Wolter Peeters
“Something I noted at the start is, for Australians, Hamilton is a bad guy,” he says.
“If you want the audience to resonate with him, you’ve got to go down a different path.”
For Arrow, that meant finding where Hamilton could be viewed as “a bit more of a larrikin”.
“I had to find the moments that I could be lighter, more comedic. There are not very many of them, but if you can’t do that early on, you lose the audience. You don’t want them to hate him.”
Opening at the Lyric Theatre in March 2021, COVID-19 restrictions soon cut Hamilton audiences by half. When Sydney entered lockdown, the show closed for four months, cancelling 133 performances.
It reopened with masked, reduced audiences that October, transferring to Melbourne, Brisbane and Auckland before an international tour took some cast, including Arrow, to Manila, Abu Dhabi and Singapore. The Australian tour returned to Sydney last August.
Arrow will end his run with the rest of the cast – including Vidya Makan as Eliza, Hamilton’s wife, and Callan Purcell as his rival Aaron Burr – when the tour concludes at the Lyric on January 25, having played Hamilton more than 800 times: more than the show’s creator and original star, Lin-Manuel Miranda.
But despite being Hamilton for so long – Arrow admits his fast speaking style, essential for the show’s rap libretto, must be toned down for his next project, Opera Australia’s Guys and Dolls – he is still exploring ways of playing him.
“I am mapping out my final few weeks, ‘What have I wanted to do this entire time?’ Now is the time to get to the bottom of those ideas.”
Hamilton is a show about legacy, both made (a retiring Washington promises to “teach them how to say goodbye”) and missed (Hamilton was a seldom-remembered Founding Father before the musical).
Saying goodbye to the show will be hard, Arrow says, although its alumni have offered advice.
“The one thing people who have done it and stopped doing it have said is that it is never done with you,” he says, noting his international tour co-star, Rachelle Ann Go, left the West End cast several years before getting the call to reprise her role as Eliza.
In Hamilton, Burr remarks of 18th century New York: “There’s nothing like summer in the city.” For Perth-born Arrow, the sentiment rings true in Sydney.
“Sydney Harbour is one of the most majestic things we have in Australia,” he says. Conveniently for Arrow, that’s precisely the location he’ll be playing Nicely-Nicely Johnson in OA’s outdoor production from March. “One of my favourite things about Sydney summer is just enjoying how majestic it is.”
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