Freestyle Love reigns supreme

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The cast of Freestyle Love Supreme at American Conservatory Theater’s Geary Theater includes (from left) Chris Sullivan (Shockwave), Andrew Bancroft (Jelly Donut), Jay C. Ellis (Jellis J), Kaila Mullady (Kaiser Rözé), Morgan Reilly (Hummingbird), Aneesa Folds (Young Nees) and Anthony Veneziale (Two Touch). BELOW: Freestyling with (from left) Bancroft, Ellis, Folds and Veneziale. Photos by Kevin Berne


Wednesday night at the Geary Theater was one those nights theater lovers had been waiting for: the re-opening of American Conservatory Theater’s glorious home. We thought such an occasion would happen post-pandemic, but as that “post” era seems ever elusive, we’ll take what vaccinations and masks will allow.

And what they allow at this moment in the gorgeous Geary is exceptionally enjoyable. Freestyle Love Supreme is not a new show (its roots go back to 2004), but among its creators – Thomas Kail, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Anthony Veneziale (who originally conceived the project) – are Broadway superstars. Miranda is, well, Miranda (Hamilton, In the Heights, Encanto and a million things he’s already done) and Kail is the Tony-winning director of Hamilton. So this improv hip-hop side project garnered a lot of attention and eventually found life on Broadway and many other places.

The most recent Broadway iteration of FLS kicks off its national tour at the Geary, and though this 90-ish-minute blast of high-energy theatrics would be a giddy delight on any given night, its arrival during our most recent surge feels especially fortuitous. It’s a bountiful serving of inventive fun when we needed it most.

The concept is just like any improv show: the performers will create entirely original work based on suggestions from the audience. In this case, the stakes are raised by the performers having to freestyle rap with the help of two keyboardists and two beatboxers to control melody and rhythm. So the performers are rapping, singing and acting all at the same time, which is quite the high-wire act.

Happily, this crew, which can vary from night to night with special guests, knows how to spit rhymes (as they say), get laughs, connect with deeper emotions and offer high-velocity entertainment. Veneziale serves as the de facto host as the well-crafted but just loose enough structure keeps the show moving from segment to segment without feeling constrictive.

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In true improv fashion, audience members are called upon to supply raw material like verbs, things they intensely dislike, things they love and, twice during the show, more involved things like a painful memory you wish you could do over or how you spent your day. Of course the masks muffled the suggestions somewhat, but everybody who wanted to be heard was heard (from the balcony in response to things you couldn’t live without: the word “the”).

At Wednesday’s opening-night performance, the verbs included litigate, catapult, masturbate and fondle. The crew chose litigate to expound upon, but they managed to get most of the other words in there as well. Among the things that were working the audience’s last nerves were Joe Manchin, Covid, the My Pillow guy, Wordle, “my vegan girlfriend” and “too much mayonnaise.” In a 21st-century pandemic twist, audience members can scan a QR code in the program and submit words for a fast round of improv rapping as the words are pulled at random from a bucket.

There are three more involved segments of the evening, all of which verged on brilliant on opening night. Recalling a childhood memory, an audience member named Breezy described her second day of third grade at a new school when she fainted while giving a book report. Veneziale interviewed Breezy for more details (the school was in New Jersey, the teacher was Mrs. Walker, the book was Nancy Drew, and if she had it to do over again, Breezy would have said “no” when asked to do her report). Then the cast re-created the event before rewinding and providing the “just say no” alternative reality. Morgan Reilly (aka Hummingbird) was especially effective in the role of Breezy, who became the center of a “raise your voice” anthem at the end of the bit.

A more intimate moment had four performers on stools riffing on the audience-inspired word “destiny” by sharing a story they assured us was 100% true. Jay C. Ellis (aka Jellis J) rapped about his childhood in Ohio and coming out. Andrew Bancroft (aka Jelly Donut) described his time living in the Bay Area when he discovered rap battles in Oakland and found his life’s calling. Veneziale (aka Two Touch) also recalled time spent living in San Francisco, but that quickly expanded into a piece about racial equality and George Floyd’s needless death. Throughout these stories, Aneesa Folds (aka Young Nees) supplied soulful vocals, which were mostly vocalizations on the word destiny. It was a beautiful segment that underscored the notion that improv isn’t always (and shouldn’t always be) going for laughs.

The show’s finale had Veneziale finding an audience member willing to go into great detail about their day prior to arriving at the theater. On this night, a high school science teacher named Jay talked about his kids, his parents, his job, his workout regimen and his invitation to discuss Finnish education at a Palo Alto senior center. Then the full cast turned that day into a rather astonishing hip-hop musical.

Part theater, part concert, part party trick, Freestyle Love Supreme revels in on-the-spot creativity. The stage crackles with invention as the talented performers revel in riffing off of one another and sharing the spotlight. It’s generous, it’s dazzling and it’s the kind of spine-tingling communal experience you could never get in front of a screen.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Thomas Kail, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Anthony Veneziale’s Freestyle Love Supreme continues through Feb. 13 at American Conservatory Theater’s Geary Theatre, 415 Geary St., San Francisco. Tickets are $10-$130. Call 415-749-2228 or visit act-sf.org. ACT’s Covid policies are here.

Check out the excellent documentary We Are Freestyle Love Supreme on Hulu.

Hamilton continues to dazzle in new #AndPeggy tour

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The cast of the #AndPeggy tour of Hamilton, at the SHN Orpheum Theatre through Sept. 8, includes, from left, Rubén J. Carbajal as John Laurens, Julius Thomson III as Alexander Hamilton, Simon Longnight as Marquis de Lafayette and Brandon Louis Armstrong as Hercules Mulligan. Photo by Joan Marcus

If anything, the current company – known as the #AndPeggy company – of Hamilton now at the SHN Orpheum Theatre through Sept. 8, is even better than the one we saw at the same theater in 2017. Maybe it’s because this company got to perform for three weeks in Puerto Rico with the show’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, reprising the lead role. Or maybe the Hamilton machine, with productions in New York, Chicago and London and with two other tours (currently in Tampa and Cincinnati), has just become so incredibly efficient that it has collected all the best performers in all the land(s).

You might expect that a property that burns as hot and bright as Hamilton does in our pop culture would crest and fade at some point. That may happen, but not yet. The custodians of this extraordinary musical are taking awfully good care of it and are not only preserving but also expanding on the work of Miranda, director Thomas Kail, choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler and orchestrator/arranger Alex Lacamoire. What that team created and what continues to unfold on stage is absolutely remarkable.

This is the third time I’ve seen Hamilton (original cast on Broadway, the first national tour launch in San Francisco in 2017 and now #AndPeggy company), and I feel like I could see 50 more times and still not absorb everything happening on that stage. It’s so easy to get caught up in the story of Hamilton and Burr weaving their narratives through the birth of a nation and tangling in their final dual that you don’t always notice what’s happening on the periphery in Blankenbuehler’s incredibly rich work for the ensemble or how Kail’s staging makes such effective use of the two turntables that you fall into the seamless flow of scene after compelling scene. [Just how intricate is the staging? Read this fascinating piece on the dancer who is known as #TheBullet.]

Miranda and company revolutionized musical theater by a) making the racial diversity of the cast so important that it seems there’s no other possible way to make good theater, b) merging history with the present in such a way as to make both more alive and more intricately connected that many of us realized and c) fusing hip-hop, rap, pop, R&B and musical theater in ways that are so vibrant and rich that other contemporary scores seem bland by comparison. All of that becomes even clearer on repeated viewings (and listenings, though the cast album only tells half the story because the visuals are so powerful).

Happily, Hamilton seems far from becoming a museum piece or something that can only be in the mold of the original production. In the performances especially, actors are given enough space to put their own spin on the characters. That’s where the #AndPeggy company really shines. Starting with Julius Thompson III as Hamilton, the performances are fresh and focused, and the chemistry among all the major players is electric.

Thompson brings all kinds of youthful enthusiasm to young Alexander, newly arrived in New York from the West Indies, one more immigrant who will get the job done (that lyric still gets a round of applause). He’s brash and confident and terrified and insecure – a sure recipe for success. As Hamilton makes friends and moves up through the ranks in the Revolutionary War, Thompson expands in the role, and by the time Hamilton is a battered politician, philandering husband and grieving father, there is a depth and ache that comes from maturity and harsh experience. Through it all, Thompson’s voice is glorious (all love to Miranda, but his distinctive voice is not his strongest suit).

Donald Webber Jr. as Aaron Burr is sly and quiet at first. He embodies Burr’s “talk less, smile more” philosophy, but when it comes to Burr’s ambition, which seems constantly thwarted by Hamilton, the actor releases a powerful fury. His “Wait for It” is the best I’ve heard, and his “The Room Where It Happens” dazzles in its show-stopping desperation.

We saw Isaiah Johnson as George Washington last time around, and he’s even better now. When Washington decides to step down from the presidency and enlists Hamilton’s help in writing his farewell address, it’s a moving moment. But Johnson lifts the number – “One Last Time” – higher and digs deeper, making it a show highlight.

This is basically a whole show of highlights, so there are too many to mention here. Just know that “The Schuyler Sisters” (played by Julia K. Harriman as Eliza, Sabrina Sloan as Angelica and Darilyn Castillo as Peggy) is as snazzy as it needs to be; King George III (Rick Negron) is as diabolically funny as he needs to be; and the boys – Brandon Louis Armstrong as Hercules Mulligan/James Madison, Rubén J. Carbajal as John Laurens/Philip Hamilton and Simon Longnight as Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson – are a boisterous, funny, obstreperous and loyal.

I see something new and hear something new every time I see the show, and one thing that must be said about this company (and perhaps the sound system at the Orpheum) is that their diction is superb. Approximately 10 bazillion words fly by in this 2 1/2-hour show, and I heard more of them than I ever had before, which was thrilling. Miranda has become so famous for so many things at this point it’s nice to be reminded just what an inventive, intelligent and emotional composer he is.

Hamilton succeeds in abundant ways, but the thing that really got me this time was how our smart, squabbling founding fathers were really just winging it. Doing the best they could, relying on their educations, brandishing their egos, but never possessing absolute answers. The nation was a work in progress then and remains so today. That’s comforting…and terrifying. In Hamilton it would seem there is room enough for us all to figure it out. If only reality reflected one of our great works of art.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Hamilton: An American Musical continues through Sept. 8 at the SHN Orphem Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco. Tickets are $111-$686, subject to change. Call 888-746-1799 or visit www.shnsf.com.

Daily #HAM4HAM ticket lottery
At each performance of Hamilton 44 tickets are made available at $10 each. Use the Hamilton app or visit hamiltonmusical.com/lottery to enter and to read all the details.

Hamilton in SF: Re-creating America

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They are not throwing away their shot: (from left) Ruben J. Carbajal is John Laurens, Michael Luwoye is Alexander Hamilton, Jordan Donica is the Marquis de Lafayette and Mathenee Treco is Hercules Mulligan in the San Francisco production of Hamilton at the Orpheum Theatre, part of the SHN season. Below center: The company of Hamilton. Below bottom: Luwoye’s Hamilton is in the eye of a hurricane. Photos by Joan Marcus

When a Broadway musical becomes a phenomenon, like Hamilton, it’s sometimes hard to see the show amid all the fireworks of fan adulation, critical hosannas, glittering awards, staggering dollar signs and the inevitable whines of “Overrated!” The Hamilton fireworks show has been especially colorful with a beloved creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, who has conquered social media (try to keep up with @Lin_Manuel on Twitter), a PBS documentary, a best-selling book about the musical (not to mention the inspiration for the musical, Ron Chernow’s Hamilton, which has also been further buoyed by the success of the musical), a Grammy-award-winning original cast album that has (as of last month) gone triple platinum and a thematically linked pop album called The Hamilton Mixtape.

Whew. That’s a lot.

If you love Hamilton, and let me say for the record that I love Hamilton, there’s a whole lot to love, including, now, a new company in my hometown. After the Chicago company, which began performances last fall, this new one is what would be considered the national touring company. It’s here until August as part of the SHN season before heading to Los Angeles. The full Broadway creative team is represented here, and at Thursday’s opening-night production, the show shone through the hype with clarity, excitement and emotional heft.

Musicals have turned into landmark events before (Hair, A Chorus Line, Rent), but Hamilton invented a new level of wattage. There are so many reasons for that, but it starts with Miranda, the whirling dervish of an impresario who conceived the show, wrote the words and the music and the libretto and starred in the first production at New York’s Public Theater in 2015 and again when the show moved to Broadway in 2016. Like Jonathan Larsen before him, he cracked open the Broadway musical and reminded us that shows can sound like now and then and succeed on their own terms. With director Thomas Kail he assembled a creative team of artists working at their peak to craft something that, in the end, feels inevitable – of course this exists in this form, how could it not have existed previously?

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From the colonial solidity of the wood and brick walls and fluidity of the two turntables on David Korins’ unit set to the sharp and defining shapes of Howell Binkley’s lighting design; from the period detail and high-fashion elegance of Paul Tazewell’s costumes to the nearly nonstop emotional physicality of Andy Blankenbuehler’s expressive choreography – everything comes together here to tell a powerful story about an incredible man – an immigrant, it should be noted – during an incredible time. The beautiful duality of Hamilton is not just in its score with its contemporary sound to tell the story of American revolution and its aftermath. It’s also a story of then that informs who we are now. That comes from the historical details themselves involving the messy birth of our nation, the squabbling, the political maneuvering, the fundamental disagreements and the dream of creating a truly independent nation from the ground up. It also comes from the casting: people of color playing white colonials. This is not an empty effort to make good on promises of diversity. It’s a profound statement about the history of this nation belonging to and serving all its citizens, and it’s a staggering thing to watch these actors working with such verve and integrity playing people who, in the Colonial era, would likely have repressed people of color.

From a theatrical point of view, it’s thrilling to see incredibly talented performers get a chance to prove what stars they are. That’s what happened on Broadway, and it’s sure to happen with every subsequent production. Thanks to Miranda and his team, this exceptionally well-crafted material allows actors, borrowing a song lyric here, to rise up and meet the challenges it presents, both historic and artistic. Actors have to summon the personae of Alexander Hamilton and King George III and Eliza Hamilton and do right by show-stopping songs like “The Schuyler Sisters,” “You’ll Be Back” and “What Did I Miss?”

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The San Francisco company bursts with stars, starting with Michael Luwoye in the title role. He has the distinction of being, so far, the only actor to have played Burr and Hamilton in the same day (last fall on Broadway). His Hamilton here is more serious and less vulnerable than Miranda’s was on Broadway. With Miranda it was tricky: with his Hamilton, you were also seeing him. When Hamilton talks about writing like he’s running out of time, he’s also describing the incredibly busy and prolific Miranda. These two big-brained achievers have a lot in common. With Luwoye, it’s easier to see the orphan Hamilton who forcefully and through the combined power of his brain and ambition, made his way from hardship in the West Indies to the peak of American politics, creating our financial system as our first Secretary of the Treasury. Luwoye has a powerful voice and the kind of charisma he can ratchet up as the show progresses and Hamilton’s power and stature grows.

As Hamilton’s friend turned arch-rival Aaron Burr, Joshua Henry pretty much owns the stage. Whether he’s being tender on “Dear Theodosia” (a duet he and Hamilton sing to their infant children) or stopping the show with the dazzling “The Room Where It Happens,” Henry is a first-rate actor and singer, and his realization after that fateful duel with Hamilton, that the world was wide enough for both of them, lands with absolutely heartbreaking resonance.

The leading women in this company are remarkable – every bit as good as their Broadway counterparts. Emmy Raver-Lampman as Angelica, the eldest of the Schuyler Sisters and the one who meets Hamilton first, is ferocious. She’s a powerful woman in a time that did not appreciate powerful women, so she simmers and she channels her intelligence and wisdom as best she can. Solea Pfeiffer as Eliza Schuyler Hamilton has two wonderful musical moments: “Satisfied,” in which she positions herself as Hamilton’s partner in life and “Burn,” where, after his scandalous affair, she attempts to remove herself from his narrative. She has a gorgeous voice, but even better than that, the emotional acuity of her delivery is staggering. As Peggy, the youngest Schuyler Sister, Amber Iman gets the laugh line in the feel-good number “The Schuyler Sisters,” but she comes on strong as Maria Reynolds, the woman who nearly undoes the Hamilton marriage. She and Luwoye sizzle through “Say No to This.”

The entire ensemble dazzles in its beauty and power with stand-out work coming from Rory O’Malley as a very funny King George III, Mathenee Treco as Hercules Mulligan and James Madison and Ruben J. Carbajal as John Laurens and Philip Hamilton.

The abundance of musical riches here is almost too good to be true. In Act II, to have “What’d I Miss” followed a few songs later by “The Room Where It Happens” followed by Washington’s farewell in “One Last Time” followed by the extraordinary “It’s Quiet Uptown” (one of the saddest, most exquisitely constructed cascades of music about grief and forgiveness ever written for musical theater) – it’s more than most musicals can even dare to hope for.

Miranda and his crew have re-set the bar with Hamilton. A new generation will consider this their defining musical, and still more will have to look twice at a portrait of the actual Alexander Hamilton or George Washington or Thomas Jefferson and feel a twinge of disappointment that he’s actually just another dead white guy. There’s a recurring line in Hamilton that is true for a lot of reasons, one of which is the opportunity to appreciate this show in this moment: “Look around, look around. How lucky we are to be alive right now.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton continues through Aug. 5 at the Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco. Tickets are $100-$868. Call 888-746-1799 or visit www.hamilton.shnsf.com

Ticket Lottery!
Hamilton tickets are hard to come by and, when they are, tend to be expensive. Happily, the San Francisco production, like Chicago and New York, offers an online lottery for 44 tickets at $10 each (#Ham4Ham) for every performance. To enter the lottery visit www.luckyseat.com/hamilton.html. Good luck!