It is a rare thing: not just a theatrical landmark, but a show that jolts our thinking about popular culture and casts new light on some of the most storied events in American history. ‘‘Hamilton’’ arrives on Broadway this month, riding a wave of adulation not seen in American theater in decades. George Washington, the prime mover in the creation of the United States financial system, the first secretary of the Treasury, the author of nearly half of the Federalist Papers, the subject of America’s first political sex scandal, the bane and bugbear of everyone from Burr to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison? But it is the manner in which ‘‘Hamilton’’ poses this question - in the emphatic cadences of rap, with witty rhymes pouring out over a tolling beat - that has been electrifying audiences since January, when the show debuted off Broadway at New York’s Public Theater. Croix to become a storied founding father: an aide-de-camp of Gen. How exactly did Hamilton rise from the deprivations of his childhood in the island backwater of St. Burr steps to center stage and reels off several lines of verse: The houselights rise on Aaron Burr, the third vice president of the United States and, infamously, the killer of Hamilton in a duel in 1804. ‘‘HAMILTON,’’ the new musical biography of Alexander Hamilton created by and starring Lin-Manuel Miranda, kicks off with a doozy of a question.
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