‘Hamilton’
“A toast to the groom, to the bride,” … and to the fans! Lin-Manuel Miranda’s beloved musical about one of America’s unsung heroes, Alexander Hamilton, just celebrated its 10th birthday and continues to find new political and cultural relevance. The Broadway hit that coupled hip-hop music with the founding fathers — an unlikely paring that forever changed ticket prices and spurred an era of race-conscious casting — went on to win 11 Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize for drama after its debut in 2015.
Luckily for “Hamilton” fans, the show was filmed at the Richard Rodgers Theater in Manhattan the following year, meaning you can take in the musical with most of its original Broadway cast. The live-capture version, recorded with nine cameras and more than 100 microphones, has been available on Disney+ since its release during the pandemic. But come next month, fans will also be able to watch it on the big screen; the filmed production hits movie theaters nationwide on Sept. 5.
‘Alterations’
Stream it on National Theater.
Michael Abbensetts, a Guyana-born British playwright, died in 2016, but thanks to a revival by Britain’s Royal National Theater this past spring, his 1978 play has received a new life. Set in an alterations shop crammed with suits and clothing racks, this comedic drama follows a tailor as he navigates two types of race: the sprint to finish sewing a large order overnight for a demanding client, and discrimination in a culture hostile toward immigrants. Both pressures amount to a portrait of Black entrepreneurship in 1970s London.
Scenes are punctuated with bursts of Reggae, and a spiritual yearning — to return to Guyana, to join Britain’s middle class — is threaded throughout. The revived production, directed by Lynette Linton and starring Arinzé Kene, was filmed earlier this year, cementing Abbensetts’s work in the theater’s Black Plays Archive.
‘Chicago’
Stream the film on Amazon Prime, Paramount+ and Apple TV.
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The post Theater to Stream in August: ‘Hamilton’ and a Comedy About Immigration appeared first on New York Times.
