Shortly after winning the titular role in the Australian production of Broadway smash Hamilton, Jason Arrow realised there was a problem.
In American history, Alexander Hamilton is a revolutionary hero. Strip that away and you’re left with a cocky, philandering bloke who – spoilers – ultimately overestimates himself.
Jason Arrow (right), Vidya Makan (centre) and Callan Purcell (left) will end their run in Hamilton when the show closes this month.Credit: Wolter Peeters
“Something I noted at the start is, for Australians, Hamilton is a bad guy,” he says.
“If you want the audience to resonate with him, you’ve got to go down a different path.”
For Arrow, that meant finding where Hamilton could be viewed as “a bit more of a larrikin”.
“I had to find the moments that I could be lighter, more comedic. There are not very many of them, but if you can’t do that early on, you lose the audience. You don’t want them to hate him.”
Opening at the Lyric Theatre in March 2021, COVID-19 restrictions soon cut Hamilton audiences by half. When Sydney entered lockdown, the show closed for four months, cancelling 133 performances.
It reopened with masked, reduced audiences that October, transferring to Melbourne, Brisbane and Auckland before an international tour took some cast, including Arrow, to Manila, Abu Dhabi and Singapore. The Australian tour returned to Sydney last August.
Arrow will end his run with the rest of the cast – including Vidya Makan as Eliza, Hamilton’s wife, and Callan Purcell as his rival Aaron Burr – when the tour concludes at the Lyric on January 25, having played Hamilton more than 800 times: more than the show’s creator and original star, Lin-Manuel Miranda.
