With tickets for Hamilton sold out months in advance, theatre lovers everywhere have been trying to find a way to get their fix. The latest way to be part of the craze that has been sweeping the nation for more than a year is to attend Spamilton – a parody of the popular musical and its creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda.
When Miranda saw the show the other night at the Triad on the Upper West Side, he “laughed his brains out”. As he should – the show is funny and the cast talented, holding their own belting out raps and other songs. Yet those who have yet to listen to Hamilton or those who do not find themselves living and breathing Broadway might find themselves missing out on the joke.
The premise of Forbidden Broadway, a New York parody revue created by Gerard Alessandrini, is to rewrite a popular musical and turn the spotlight on Broadway itself. This year’s parody, Spamilton, follows Miranda – played by Dan Rosales – as he tries to revolutionize Broadway.
The humor in the show is not only dependent on one’s knowledge of Hamilton, the world-beating musical – but also on the world of theater in general. Do names Audra McDonald, Daveed Diggs and Stephen Sondheim mean anything to you? If not, you might find yourself lost at Spamilton with jokes flying past your head left and right.
However, if you know which Broadway diva once stopped a performance of Gypsy to yell at an audience member taking a photo, and which Broadway show closed this year after its leading lady announced she was expecting, then step right up. Spamilton is the show for you.
Eliza Orlins, one of the younger members of the audience at the show I attended, admitted to having missed some of the jokes. Her friend Winston Nguyen, who attended dressed in Hamiltonesque garb, however, was happy to explain whatever she missed.
“We both LOVED Spamilton tonight!” she told me after. “We are huge Broadway nerds, in fact Winston has seen every single show currently on Broadway. The voices were incredible. We thought it was brilliantly written and the jokes were impressive. It was an awesome combination of pop culture and high culture – $800 seats and YouTube.”
Despite its steep ticket prices – “Can you believe you paid 800 bucks for this?” the Spamilton cast asks at one point – Hamilton has been able to connect with a wider audience thanks to its widely celebrated soundtrack and the rap songs that make it more accessible for younger audiences. Yet the room where it happens is still often majority white and older – leaving the cast more diverse than the audience.
Falling in love with Broadway is easy. Being able to find $50 to $100 tickets per show is harder. As a result, the audience at Spamilton reflected that Broadway still has a way to go before it is revolutionized.
At no point is this more evident than when one of the cast members takes the stage to belt out a spoof of You’ll Be Back, singing that Broadway was full of “clawingly gay” shows till the public got mad.
“Straight is back. Gay went out with Glee,” he sings. And then, where Jonathan Groff’s King George invited the Hamilton audience to harmonize with him, Spamilton’s king invites the room of older white New Yorkers to join him in singing: “gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay”. It is a sight to see.
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Spamilton will run at the Triad until 30 October
