The last time we as the world felt any collective happiness was the summer of 2016, when Pokémon Go first came out and the Hamilton soundtrack was blasting everywhere. We’ll never be able to recreate that lightning in a bottle happiness that was that magical summer, but my goodness does the first trailer for the live recording of the original Broadway cast of Hamilton almost bring it back for a minute.
Though the Alexander Hamilton musical debuted in 2015, became really popular that year, and swept the 2016 Tony Awards, it was the summer of 2016 that it truly surged from popular thing your musical theater friend won’t shut up about to even your mom is singing along to “Non-Stop.” This was when tickets to the Broadway show were near impossible to get — even after Lin-Manuel Miranda left the cast July 2016.
Hamil-mania has more or less tapered off, the oversaturation of the musical and Miranda as a creator making it reach a point of ambivalence and possibly exhaustion to some.
But even if you think Hamilton is too mainstream now, even if Lin-Manuel Miranda’s cheery Twitter poems make you cringe, even if the phrase “Thomas Jefferson’s Hatsune Miku binder” sends a jolt down your spine, there is something absolutely transcendent about seeing the original cast in this trailer. Miranda tweeted the trailer late Sunday night and for one brief minute — set to the instrumentals of “Satisfied” intermingled with snippets of other songs — it was summer 2016 once again.
The Hamilton recording drops on Disney Plus on July 3. In case you were wondering, Disney ended free trials of Disney Plus last week.
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Hulu/Disney Plus bundle
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