Top Five Performances: 2025 Tony Awards

This post is coming to you later than I expected. Recently, my not-exactly-dormant-but-more-backburner obsession with Our Flag Means Death walked in, smacked me across the face, and said, “The Gentleman Pirate, I presume?” As such, I don’t have a lot of interest in engaging with stuff other than Our Flag Means Death right now, and I wrote this very gradually, in bite-sized chunks. So while I’m rewatching the show, I probably won’t be posting much beyond previously-written stuff that I already had locked and loaded, mostly Other Doctors Lives and Y tu Luna también. I know I’ll be getting back to Doctor Who and other stuff eventually—not to mention more Our Flag Means Death-related posts—but for now, I’m taking a breather and letting the hyperfixation guide me.

But even though my all-consuming interest is currently in a short-lived pirate romcom that was unjustly canceled a year-and-a-half ago, it was quite an interesting Tonys this year. We got a good, eclectic mix of shows, and it took some doing to pick out a Top Five from the many performances on display.

 

Floyd Collins

I’ve always liked this show, and I hadn’t realized there was a revival of it starring Jeremy Jordan! After the ensemble opened with “Ballad of Floyd Collins,” Jordan came on to perform “The Call.” I love how the lighting, combined with Jordan’s movements and the echo effects, effectively created the impression that he actually was moving through a cave. And no surprise, Jordan sounded terrific.

Hamilton

Look, tell me it’s “cringe” if you want. I know the politics are incredibly 2015. I still love it, and this 10-year reunion performance made me vibrate with excitement. I loooooove that it was a montage that gave almost every character a moment in the spotlight (if I recall correctly, Anthony Ramos is the only major cast member who wasn’t featured.) I mean, “Non-Stop”? “My Shot”? “The Schuyler Sisters”? “Guns and Ships”? “The Battle of Yorktown”? “The Room Where It Happens”? “History Has Its Eyes on You”? I wasn’t even thinking about the fact that Jonathan Groff would be there too, coming in with a bit of “You’ll Be Back.” Just hit after hit after hit. Not one person missed, everyone looked cool in their black formal wear (with bonus red jacket for Groff!), and each new segue brought me fresh waves of excitement!

 

Maybe Happy Ending

I loved this sweet, charming performance of “Chasing Fireflies / Never Fly Away.” Darren Criss and Helen J. Shen were both adorable as a pair of helper robots searching for fireflies, which they considered “little forest robots.” And having a firefly on the end of the conductor’s baton was just a beautiful touch!

 

Operation Mincemeat

I didn’t know anything about Operation Mincemeat, but this performance definitely got me interested in the show. Their number, “Born to Lead,” savaged the Eton-type MI5 upper brass with sly, clever lyrics. Unlike the RAF or naval soldiers, these men don’t know much about flying or sailing, but that doesn’t stop them from being in charge—their repeated refrain is, “For some were born to follow, / But we were born to lead.” Another line I loved is, “For fortune favors bravery, / And a fortune’s what I’ve got!” Great performance!

 

Pirates!

My prevailing thought while watching this performance was, “I bet this show is so much fun.” The cast performed two numbers, “Sail the Ocean Blue” and “Washboards,” and they were charming, entertaining, and energetic. I don’t know much about The Pirates of Penzance, and I don’t know what series of events leads the whole cast to dance while playing washboards together, but it was a delight. Just fun!

A Few Thoughts on Cyrano and Hamilton

*Spoilers.*

I’ve been thinking a lot about Cyrano since I watched it, and in considering the various angles of the story, I found myself drawing parallels with Hamilton numerous times. This was unexpected, but I leaned into it and started teasing out more of these thoughts. They may wind up being mostly unconnected ramblings, but I wanted to write some of them down and see what comes out.

Despite being very different characters in execution, there are plenty of similarities between Cyrano and Hamilton. Obviously, both place great value on their way with words. Cyrano is a wit and poet who always puts his best word forward, and Hamilton “[writes] like [he’s] running out of time,” turning to the strength of his words whenever he’s in trouble. They’re both accomplished men who project a lot of confidence but also have deep insecurities that they endeavor to mask. Cyrano throws clever insults at himself before others have the chance to, and Hamilton’s forceful energy is a way of plowing past his doubts. Both have a great deal of pride, which can get them into trouble. Cyrano’s love for Roxanne is all-consuming, but he’s so convinced he’ll be rejected that he never makes a move, and Hamilton’s drive to prove himself to those who look down on him burns a lot of bridges, including in his family.

But for all of Cyrano’s Hamilton-like qualities, when it comes to Roxanne, his reluctance to act is more reminiscent of Burr. It’s not the same—Burr’s “wait for it” approach is a calculated stance to gain the most advantage by not committing to anything that’s not a sure thing—but it’s striking that Cyrano, who’s so bold in everything, holds back at the one thing that matters most to him. Le Bret tells him, “You forget, I’ve seen you in battle. You’re a fighter to the end. But in love, you’ve raised the white flag.”

Then, there’s Roxanne, who reminds me of both Angelica and Eliza in different ways. Her nimble mind and hunger for poetry bears a resemblance to Angelica’s intellectual sharpness, as is the clever way she navigates the uncertainties of life as a single woman. She knows how to respond to the Duke to keep him on the hook, playing the game to get what she wants without being trapped. But while Angelica is pragmatic enough to realize all the reasons why she can’t just marry for love, giving up the man she wants to secure stability for her family and happiness for her sister, Roxanne is also a romantic who refuses to marry someone she doesn’t love. Instead, she falls head over heels for a poor soldier and risks her situation with the Duke to write to him and arrange secret meetings; outwardly, she’s bolder than Eliza, but this leading with her heart is definitely a more Eliza-like attribute.

This final point might feel like a stretch, but it was the one that led into all my other Hamilton comparisons, so here we go. The subtle, dreamlike quality of Cyrano’s musical elements is really effective to me, the way the characters softly slide in and out of song, the way the ensemble can suddenly slip into dance without ever acknowledging that they’re part of a musical number. Because the music is fueled largely by Cyrano and Roxanne’s words, by their poetic thoughts, it struck me that their words are bringing the musical around them into being. And that made me think of Eliza talking about Hamilton’s letters to her in “Burn”: “You and your words flooded my senses. / Your sentences left me defenseless. / You built me palaces out of paragraphs, / You built cathedrals.” More directly, this could simply be a parallel for how Roxanne is affected by the letters Cyrano writes her on Christian’s behalf, but I also really like the idea that both of them are creating the musical with their poetry.

Viewing Hamilton through a 2020 Lens

When I reviewed the filmed recording of Hamilton, I noted some of the things that have been happening in the world in which it was released – the pandemic, the protests – and watching it, different things kept popping into my head as I thought about it being filmed in June of 2016. The first time Hamilton and Eliza kiss, I thought, “Remember the days when if was safe for actors to do that?”, and the realizations built from there. When Hamilton was filmed, Obama was still president. A lot of people were still hopeful that Trump would never be president. The Harvey Weinstein story hadn’t yet opened the floodgates of people telling their stories of sexual harassment. DACA was still secure. Philando Castile was still alive. It was just over four years ago that this was filmed, but so much has happened since then.

As such, it’s inevitable that the experience of watching Hamilton in 2020 is going to be different than it would’ve been for those audiences in 2016. There’s been talk recently about Hamilton’s blind spots, and Lin-Manuel Miranda has acknowledged the validity of that criticism. I know that, for me, it stood out more that Washington is virtually given a free pass as a slaveholder, whereas the more antagonistic Jefferson (along with Madison, by association) is called out more. Miranda painted Hamilton as a complex protagonist with flaws, but he softened over some of Hamilton’s views that wouldn’t be received well by progressive audiences today.

This isn’t a new phenomenon, of course. Most stories about the Founders gloss over the parts of them that make us uncomfortable, and a lot of America’s sordid history gets brushed out of sight when we want to remember the “heroes” of the past. To use another pop-culture example from recent years, Crane on Sleepy Hollow frequently extolled the virtues of both Washington and Jefferson while, in the present day, he worked alongside a Black female police officer, never really stopping to consider what Abbie’s place might’ve been among his mentors in that era. Iron Jawed Angels, a movie I really love about Alice Paul’s suffragist movement, barely touches on the fact that she excluded Black women in order to maintain support from groups in the South. All too often, the ugly parts that don’t fit the desired narrative are referenced with lip service at best. It doesn’t mean that the stories told can’t still be compelling and evocative, but it does mean that they’re incomplete. Miranda is one of countless storytellers to have done this – we don’t need to rake him over the coals for it, but we should interrogate his choices to tell the story the way he did, just as I should interrogate my reactions to it, past and present.

Even though Hamilton and Supergirl are obviously two wildly-different properties, it’s similar to what I’ve been saying in my recent Crimes Against… posts: a work can be both appreciated for the good it brings and critiqued for the elements where it falls short. As I’ve said, being a thoughtful consumer of media doesn’t look like just one thing, and we all need to decide what we choose to consume and why. We all have limits, and we all make allowances. Along the way, I hope we all urge creators to continually improve themselves and create works that are more honest and inclusive.

That’s a lot on the recent criticisms of Hamilton, but I wanted to talk about other thoughts I had while watching Hamilton in 2020, the moments that resonated with me differently. First, I loved “The Story of Tonight” and the “rise up” interlude in “My Shot” even more this time around – I’ve always liked them, of course, and I know those lines have appeared on protest signs since the first Women’s March, but it was stirring to see these Black and brown people playing American revolutionaries singing it on my screen while, outside, protests for racial justice have been ongoing across the country (around the world) for over a month.

The cabinet battles are another element that hit home even harder. Again, it was already plenty relevant back when the show first came out, and I wrote about it at the time, but the last four years of Congress, to me, feel like they’ve gone beyond mere entrenchment. It’s to the point where it often feels like no single policy/bill is more important than “dunking” on the other team, and especially with the House and Senate split, the whole thing is just an exercise of the two parties sniping at one another as each chamber passes bills that the other has no intention of passing.

Finally, there’s Washington. Now, none of what I’ll say here negates what I said about Washington above. But looking at Washington the character (who, as played by Christopher Jackson, also brings the Obama vibes too,) one thing that really strikes me in contrast to our present circumstances is the way he’s continually motivated by what’s best for the country, keeping his own self-interest out of it. There’s obviously “One Last Time,” in which he realizes he needs to step down as president for the sake of America’s future: “If I say goodbye, / The nation learns to move on. / It outlives me when I’m gone.” But even before that, when Hamilton supports John Laurens in dueling Charles Lee over insulting remarks the latter made about Washington, Washington intervenes, thanks Lee for his service, and rebukes Hamilton for his part in the duel. When Hamilton argues that he was only defending Washington’s honor, Washington replies, “My name’s been through a lot – I can take it,” and remains focused on holding the continental army together rather than giving way to infighting. Even though Trump only announced the campaign for his 2016 run a month before Hamilton opened on Broadway, the way Washington is written feels like such a direct contrast to the president who, time and again, proves that he cares more about his reputation and his own personal gratification than the good of the country.

Hamilton (2020)

Oh, Lin-Manuel Miranda, swooping in right when we need him most. It was the pandemic that caused this filmed recording of the OBC of Hamilton to be released more than a year early, on Disney+ instead of in theaters. In the time since this release was first announced, a political revolution also kicked off, and on this 4^th of July, it was very welcome to receive this gift of the original cast of Hamilton on my screen.

Alexander Hamilton, one of the OGs of the American Revolution, accomplishes the incredible due to his skill with the written word.  Born poor and illegitimate in the Caribbean, he makes it to New York and hits the ground running.  Hamilton is armed with his passion, persistence, and clever/audacious verbosity, and he soon finds friends (like the Marquis de Lafayette, John Laurens, and Hercules Mulligan,) mentors (George Washington,) rivals (Aaron Burr,) and opponents (like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.)  He throws himself into the revolution, and later, the forging of a new nation, with unquenchable tenacity.

It was so good to see this show again. I treasure every recorded stage performance of a show – even when they’re shows that I don’t connect with as much personally, it’s still such a gift to have these moments in time captured. I know it’s not the same experience as seeing the show live, but that doesn’t mean these filmed recordings can’t be powerful in their own right (here, the tearing up started in “It’s Quiet Uptown” and continued on and off before really bringing it home in “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story.”) To have that moment captured with this show, with this cast? Forget about it.

I loved revisiting all the little touches in the production design and the stage directions. The way an ensemble member “carries” the bullet from the fateful duel. King George’s costume growing less elaborate every time he comes onstage as he gets more downtrodden. Hercules Mulligan throwing flower petals at the wedding. The way the party scene from “Helpless” is reconstructed and recontextualized in “Satisfied.” Jefferson making it rain with copies of the Reynolds Pamphlet. The ensemble surrounding Hamilton at his desk during the “How do you write like tomorrow won’t arrive?” lines in “Non-Stop.” Burr jumping on the table in “The Room Where It Happened” as an ensemble member pulls off the tablecloth. Seeing it again, I noticed even more, like the Schuyler sisters’ dresses changing in style during the second act to reflect changes in fashion over the years (but keeping the same color scheme!) So much thought went into every moment of this show.

I will say, though, that the camera work here isn’t the best. I know that the actual filming on these filmed recordings can be hit or miss, and on a show like Hamilton with so much going on, it must be difficult to decide when and where to focus the cameras. I couldn’t help comparing this recording to the one of Falsettos, which feels so well-shot (but again, Falsettos only has a cast of seven – a lot more happening onstage in Hamilton.)

And those performances – my god! Miranda’s Hamilton was the only one I hadn’t seen before, since he was out sick the day I saw the original cast on Broadway. He’s more subdued than I expected. That buzzing energy that I associate with both him and the character comes through at points, especially in the cabinet battles, but I was a little surprised not to see more of it. I wonder if this is a good representation of how he played the character, or if it’s more reflective of him nearing the end of his tenure in the role and maybe being a little worn out.

With everyone else, seeing them here brought the memories flooding back. There are no weak links in this chain. Anthony Ramos is earnest and energetic in his dual roles as John Laurens and Philip Hamilton. After getting in a little comic relief as Peggy in Act I, Jasmine Cephas Jones unleashes strong vocals to play Maria Reynolds in Act II. Okieriete Onaodowan wins the prize for best contrast between Acts I and II – Hercules Mulligan is so dynamic and gritty, and Madison is a total cold fish. Jonathan Groff’s King George is such a sassy bitch (and his spit-fueled singing is now preserved for the ages!) Phillipa Soo’s vocals as Eliza are just so pure, and again, she destroys me in the finale. Christopher Jackson’s Washington brings such a stable, grounding presence to the show. Renée Elise Goldsberry is a phenomenal Angelica, and she tears the roof off of “Satisfied.” Leslie Odom Jr.’s vocals are smooth as silk, and I love the way his Burr grows into such a fascinating foil for Hamilton. And Daveed Diggs, as both Lafayette and Jefferson, is an absolute charisma bomb, making the most of every second he’s onstage.

Warnings

Swearing, sexual content, violence, drinking, and thematic elements.