Taylor Kokinos
Jacob Bortell, center, stars in the “no-singing, no-dancing” reboot of the 1917 Broadway hit.
We’re in the era of makeovers and reboots. Do we need yet another origin story for Spider-Man? They’re really going to remake The Princess Bride? And what of the bright and shiny Hamilton?
Sure, you can try to score tickets for the national tour of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s instant classic, opening at Overture Center on Nov. 19. But you can look also to the first Hamilton, the smash hit of 1917 Broadway. It runs Nov. 15 -Dec. 7 at Broom Street Theater.
“It’s a fascinating little time capsule of early 20th century theater,” says director Doug Reed, who also serves as the 50-year-old company’s artistic director. He’s made some changes, though, overlaying Broom Street’s trademark satire.
The original Hamilton was written by Mary Hamlin (1871-1964) with some assistance from veteran British actor George Arliss (1868-1946). It was an unlikely pairing. “Mr. Arliss did little writing of my play,” Hamlin recalled toward the end of her life. “He knew nothing of American politics, did not even know, at first, that Thomas Jefferson was president of the United States.”
As the actor came up to speed, the two founded a lifelong friendship, “She was entirely unlike other untried dramatists that I had met,” wrote Arliss. She had absolutely no professional ego. “I was very grateful to her for that. During our association in the writing of Hamilton her unselfish and generous attitude towards me surprised me always, and left me ever her devoted friend.”
The show had tryouts in Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, before coming to Broadway. It was very well-received. One critic noted that “it is a real play with real men and women in it, containing an appeal not only to popular taste, but to the attention of the intelligent theatergoer.”
A national tour was planned, but then the influenza pandemic closed all but a very few theaters. Hamilton came back, however. Warner Bros. made it into a movie in 1931. As before, Arliss was the star.
Not all drama ages well, however. “It’s dry,” Reed says of the original script, which he found archived online. “It’s paragraphs and paragraphs of, ‘Citizen Hamilton, your plan for the government and the assumption of states’ debts imperils our fledgling republic, and that liberty that we all hold so dear to our bosoms.’ It’s pages of that. So I cut the hell out of it.”
Broom Street’s production takes place during the play’s 1917 rehearsals. “That gives us the freedom to sort of comment on it,” says Reed. “Also, some of the stage directions are unintentionally hilarious. I needed an excuse to get those spoken in the show somehow.”
Reed also needed a way to introduce conflict. “By everything I’ve read about George Arliss, he was a peach of a fellow,” says Reed. “Everybody liked him. Our George Arliss is a raging horrible egomaniac.” As an added attraction, at each show one lucky audience member will be tapped to play Aaron Burr.
As part of its 50th anniversary, all performances at Broom Street are pay-what-you-can. An official announcement notes, “Broom Street will happily welcome a denomination with a picture of the title character, but any amount will suffice.”
