What to Watch, Read, and Listen to After Hamilton
Hamilton: The Revolution
Readerlink
target.com
$23.69
An impressive coffee-table book, Hamilton: The Revolution takes fans behind-the-scenes of the musical with annotated lyrics, backstage photos, and a detailed history of how the production took shape.
Alexander Hamilton
Penguin Books
amazon.com
$17.38
If your interest is piqued about the founding father, pick up Ron Chernow's biography of Hamilton, the one that first inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda to write the musical.
“I knew about as much as anyone did about Alexander Hamilton, before I picked up Ron Chernow’s incredible biography,” Miranda, told CNBC.“I knew that he was on our $10 bill in the States and I knew that he died in a duel. You know you learn that in high school and that was about it.”
But he was “swept up by the story,” so much so that it inspired his work.
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
W W Norton Company
amazon.com
$16.69
Sally Hemings only makes a brief appearance in Hamilton, but if you're interested in learning more about her family's story, this book is a good place to start. In her text, author Annette Gordon-Reed tracks three generations of the Hemmings family, and how their lives intertwined with Thomas Jefferson, the man who enslaved them.
Mary Poppins Returns
amazon.com
$19.99
Can't get enough of Lin-Manuel Miranda singing and dancing? He also stars alongside Emily Blunt in Mary Poppins Returns as a Bert-esque character, a lamp-lighter named Jack.
In The Heights
amazon.com
$42.14
Miranda's first Tony-winner about the community of Washington Heights in northern Manhattan is currently being adapted into a film starring Anthony Ramos and directed by Jon M. Chu. It was expected to premiere this summer, but the release date has been postponed until 2021 because of the coronavirus. Until then, give the soundtrack a listen.
Snowpiercer
Daveed Diggs may not play the titular Hamilton, but more often than not, he steals the scene with his duel performances as lightning-fast rapper Lafayette and Hamilton's political opposition, Thomas Jefferson. Want to see him in a different sort of revolutionary role? Tune in to Snowpiercer, his new futuristic thriller on TNT.
Jesus Christ Super Star
This one might be a bit of a stretch, but there are a few undeniable similarities between Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar and Hamilton, the most prominent of which is that the historical villain (Judas, Burr) plays the role of storyteller.
Murder on the Orient Express
Leslie Odom Jr. fans, this one is for you. If you haven't watched his performance in the 2017 adaptation of Agatha Christie's classic caper, add it to your playlist ASAP.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Love Renée Elise Goldsberry, who plays Angelica Schuyler in Hamilton, in a period role? Consider streaming The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks through HBO. It stars Goldsberry as Lacks, a Black woman in the 1950s whose cells were retrieved during a biopsy, and later commercialized and used for medical purposes, without her permission, or the permission of her family for decades. While Lacks died from cervical cancer in 1951, her cells continue to impact the medical world, and have been used to develop everything from radiation treatments to the polio vaccine.
To break up the viewings, that is.