Harry Potter Flies to The Americas While Hamilton Shakes The United Kingdom
By Veronica Mkhsi-Gevorkian
It is hard to say that show business is easy. Well, it is also hard to be considered a hit sensation. For JK Rowling and Lin Manuel-Miranda, show business is clearly smooth sailing.
Joanne Rowling, who goes by JK Rowling, never thought she would write a play on the sequel to her 7 book and 8 movies series on the story of Harry Potter, the boy who lived to serve justice to his parents’ death, and the introduction of a whole new world of wizardry.
The Harry Potter author later in 2016 wrote a play which is the sequel to the series called: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Rowling teams up with Jack Thorne(screenwriter) and John Tiffany(theatre director), and it is split in two parts.
The play is based off Harry Potter’s child, Albus Severus Potter’s years in Hogwarts, a wizarding school. As stated in the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Hermione Granger (one of the main characters) states that one cannot disturb the time through time traveling. Rowling breaks the rules and does show an alternative time frame to Albus and his friends who joined him.
Even though the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was not a musical, it will compete with other musicals like the broadway adaptation of Frozen. This play is considered the highest grossing play ever. The play has made a record breaking $2,138,859. The book version of this play has sold over five million copies in North America, according to Scholastic. Will the magic apparate (apparate is a spell which allows the user to instantaneously teleport from one location to another, in the Harry Potter world) the ocean?
“Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?” and Lin Manuel-Miranda did express his story… The story of the forgotten founding father that did not have all the credit that he actually deserved: The life of Alexander Hamilton. In the year of 2009, Miranda introduced the idea of the Broadway show during the poetry jam night in the White House. A rap broadway about our founding father who introduced America to national banks and a risky financial plan. While people laughed [former President of the United States, Barack Obama being one of them] at the idea that was proposed, it was not a crazy idea as people thought. Miranda introduced to the people the first glimpse of the successful broadway musical by singing in in the perspective of Aaron Burr and showed audiences that it was not a joke, but a true talent.
In the year of 2015, Miranda introduced people to his Broadway creation in which he took part in playing Alexander Hamilton. It began as an off-broadway show, which transformed to a hit sensation musical in America. The songs which were very catchy became an international sensation in which people fell in love with ever since they did a performance at the Grammys in 2016, as well as in the Tony Awards. A couple of years later the musical was performed in New York and Chicago. Also the North American tour began as it came to California and blew everyone away.
Hamilton flew across the “pond” to London, England. It was introduced to the British fans as they performed in the 2018 Olivier awards, which is an equivalent to the Tony awards. It shook the theatres in the UK.
I believe it is a good thing that the British get a feel for American history that is not apart of their normal curriculum, even though it is a given that the British side of the story will be a lot more emphasized. But they could have picked a better person to play Hamilton. Though many have expected him to have a similar pitched voice as the original [Miranda], the british actor who played Hamilton has a higher and more squeakier pitch than I anticipated when I first listened to it. In addition, most of the singers were singing slightly slow if you compare it to the original soundtrack or performance
Overall it is impressive that phenomenal plays came to the UK and the US, which gives many Potterheads (those who read the Harry Potter series and enjoyed them) that live here in the US a tremendous joy because they don’t need to fly to London to see both part I and pat II of that play. The first stop for Harry Potter is it New York, but Potterheads are eager for it to come towards the west coast.
I am eagerly looking forward to seeing what phenomenal plays/musicals come our way to the Pantages Theatre, home to great memories.
Watch the Poetry Jam of the intro to Hamilton here: https://bit.ly/1mXGVcu
If you have not listened to Hamilton check here: https://bit.ly/2tiKN5a
Interview with JK Rowling on Harry Potter and the Cursed child: https://bit.ly/2qD1uVb
Hamilton the Olivier Awards: https://bit.ly/2ER4QIv
Hamilton The Tony Awards: https://bit.ly/2ES5XHK
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