Hamilton as Thin Place

or, That Time I Cried So Hard I Wet My Pants

Hi.

I don’t usually drop in on you in the middle of the week, but it’s HamilWeek and I thought I would update and re-share this essay I wrote in 2018 after seeing the show live. This post does contain spoiler-ish things, but if you’ve listened to the music, it’s nothing you’d be surprised by. Also, I should pre-emptively apologize for writing an essay about theatre that contains so many references to bodily functions. I guess this is my brand.

We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled emails on Friday. See you then. 👋

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For The Most Aggressive Theatre Kid You Know™️, it might surprise you that I don't see a lot of shows. I think this is some sort of PTSD due to too many SETC and UIL play competitions from high school and college. Let me tell you, seeing four different one-act versions of The Laramie Project in one day performed by West Texan sophomores will cure you of a love of live theatre faster than almost anything. But, I've had some memorable live experiences outside of my education:

Annie Get Your Gun: When I graduated from high school, my parents and grandparents took me and my younger brother to New York City. The ONLY thing I wanted to do was go to Good Morning, America and meet Diane Sawyer (which I DID and she is LOVELY), and see Bernadette Peters TONY AWARD and DRAMA DESK AWARD-WINNING TURN as Annie in Annie Get Your Gun on Broadway. Get to the Marquis, sit down, and that magical feeling washed over me. It left when the announcer came on to let us know that "the role of Annie will be played by Reba McEntire in tonight's performance." I cried. Reba was very good, but Bernadette Peters she was not.

Wicked: Like every white American woman, I saw Wicked after memorizing the soundtrack and the acoustics in my car convincing me that I was essentially Idina Menzel's vocal twin. If my 2-door 1994 Saturn Coupe could talk, it would kindly ask me to cease and desist with my feeble attempts at screeching "Popular" like I'm auditioning for a role in Hello, Dolly. For an alto who frequently sang tenor in my high school choir, there is no place for me in any starring role, especially that last note on "The Wizard and I". Past Erin, Current Erin says, "baby girl, no." My mom and I took a trip to San Antonio, we got dressed up and I immediately got a migraine. But are you even a theatre kid if a migraine stops you from seeing the most popular Broadway musical of its time? I pushed through because I am basically Xena, Princess Warrior and I can do hard things like sit in a dimly-lit theatre as people sing to me. I have no memory of the experience except bone-rattling pain every time Glinda hit a high note. 

Thoroughly Modern Millie: I saw TMM during its West End run in London and cried like a baby. Why? It's not a show you cry in really (unless you're crying over some of the really obtuse and random racism...but I digress). I mainly attribute this to deciding to do the Atkins Diet two days before we left for London. I packed all these sugar-free chocolates (which, as we all know now are essentially tasty laxatives) for the plane, and honestly, I'll never be the same. I think they had to technically retire that plane due to what happened in the bathroom over the Atlantic. Have you ever had a colon cleanse as mandated by your doctor? I have, except it was mandated by Dr. Atkins when he told me via his book these chocolates would be an acceptable substitute on my weight-loss journey. To be fair, I DID lose a lot of weight. And all my dignity. And most of my self-respect. I cried at TMM not because of its beauty, but because of my near-death miss due to laxative-induced plane diarrhea. 

SO ANYWAY, I tried to temper my expectations with Hamilton. I was very hyped, but attempting to be very chill. Mainly because I knew this wonderful and talented cast could not possibly live up to me trying to pretend they were Theater Jesus in the flesh and I wanted to cut them some slack. But the good news was that I did not have Atkins Diet-rrhea, or a migraine. And I was pretty certain Reba McEntire was not going to show up. What a plot twist that would have been.

The show itself is incredible. It lives up to the hype and more. Every time someone asks me about it, words immediately become stupid.

PERSON: How was Hamilton?
ME: So good.
PERSON: Did you love it?
ME (trying to fully encompass the magnitude of the experience with words): I did. So good.
PERSON: What did you love about it?
ME (attempting to express the full range of emotions the show evoked in me): Just all of it. Good. So good.
PERSON (walking away): Ok cool.
ME (whispering after them): It good.

Everyone who had seen the show said they basically bawled their way through it, and I had not cried by intermission. I think this was mainly because the show is such a spectacle. You can't look away. There are 100 things going on at once: little vignettes in the background, the staging, the production design, the choreography. Every inch of that show is mind-blowing. I was honestly doing great to keep up. I cannot imagine trying to do all of that and hear the lyrics for the first time. I'd have died. My friend Grass Stains (that's not her real name, but she's very skittish about the internet, so we use a fake one just to be on the safe side) had this experience when she leaned over during intermission and commented on her surprise at how "rappy" the show was so far (she literally walked in with less than zero understanding of what would be happening). She also got lost coming back from the bathroom in the dark and it was honestly one of the highlights of the show for me. To see her try to feel her way back to her seat during “Non-Stop” was a gift for which I'll forever be grateful. God works in mysterious ways.

Anyway.

BUT THEN DEAR READER, comes the song for which none of us is prepared. Look, there are some spoilers here, so if you don't want to get spoiled on a musical that's been out for almost six years, I guess skip over this.

I'm talking about when Reba McEntire shows up in the second act.

(A joke to deflect from my painful vulnerability, both physical and emotional, coming up now.)

I'm talking about “It's Quiet Uptown”.

This is the song these emotional terrorists sing after Philip dies, in probably one of the most affecting stage deaths I've ever encountered. Not only are they grieving the loss of their son (who was dueling for his father's honor and with his father's permission), but this is post-Reynolds pamphlet (or the free brochure that Hamilton writes to explain why he had an affair and just…publishes, effectively betraying and shaming his wife rather publicly).

You've heard the phrase tearjerker yes? This song reaches into your soul through your eyeballs and, with clawed, homicidal hand, bludgeons your tears loose with a 2x4 to the heart, violently wretches them back up to your eye-holes, and the power of Christ compels them out. It is agonizing to listen to, much less see performed. No gentle jerking here. This is Game of Thrones. This is war.

[The scene right before It’s Quiet Uptown…so you get it.]
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

It's literally the quietest and stillest part of the entire musical. The only accompaniment is two strings. It feels as though time as completely stopped and you're dropped into this intimate experience of grief and grace. The song itself is narrated by a character, so we're still looking in on their experience. 

If you aren't familiar with the lyrics, here's the part where I started sobbing uncontrollably as if all I loved and held dear were snatched from me:

There are moments that the words don't reach
There is a grace too powerful to name
We push away what we can never understand
We push away the unimaginable
They are standing the garden
Alexander by Eliza's side
She takes his hand
It's quiet uptown
(Forgiveness, can you imagine?)

When I say I started crying here and did not stop, I mean I have carried that minute and a half long section of the show around with me since I saw it. I mean I peed myself a little due to the body-wracking sobs.

I blame my children for their rude departure from my uterus. 

As my friend Sophie says, it (the song, not my small but unfortunate accident) “had the Gospel all over it.” Listening to this song, experiencing this particular moment in the show felt like a thin place to me. Celtic Christian monks came up with this term to describe a place where the veil between heaven and earth is thin. Timothy George says it's “the distance between heaven and earth shrinks, and time and eternity embrace.” Thin places can be anywhere: a traffic stop, a church, on top of a mountain, a bookstore, a hospital, camp, the line at Starbucks. They can come from any experience: praying with your child at night, walking through the woods, late-night talks with old friends, changing diapers, or seeing Hamilton. Thin places are where you experience God and we can almost see across the distance into the everlasting. Think of the moment in CS Lewis's The Last Battle, when the new Narnia is revealed:

You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among the mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window, there may have been a looking-glass. And as you turned away from the window, you suddenly caught sight of that sea of that valley, all over again, in the looking-glass. The sea in the mirror was in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time they were somehow different -- deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more.

Thin places are when the plastic film that dulls our present world is pulled away, and we get a glimpse of holy. When we see those rocks and flowers and blades of grass mean more for a moment. That's how I felt when I sat in my velvet upholstered seat in the CIBC Theatre and watched a moment of “grace too powerful to name” displayed in front of me. The veil was lifted and I saw myself as Alexander, shaming my family and so ruthlessly self-involved, with bodies in my wake. I saw Christ in Eliza, taking me by the hand, and continuing to live with me, to remain in my life, to have a relationship with me, to love me. It was honestly like Jesus was sitting behind me, whispering, "It's this and so so so much more," squeezing me on the shoulder because He knows what an awkward hugger I am. And then he stands up and gestures wildly, as if to say, "Oh by the way, how AMAZING is this show?!" He then left for what I assume was popcorn.

I was so overcome by that image of forgiveness, of grace, I had a physical response. I wish that response had not been peeing my pants a little, however, the magnitude of the moment remains. 

That's what I want to express about Hamilton, but I end up saying “it good.” 

It's encouraging to know that God is not confined just to places man deems sacred. Yes, God is living and active in church buildings (sometimes), but also sometimes in the shower or filling your tank up with gas. I think that's half of the battle with the thin places: you have to pay attention to what's going on around you. Missing a thin place is easy, but if you expect to encounter God, if you ask to see Him in your every day, where He lives with you, you heighten your awareness to those moments when glory breaks through.

I've taken a piece of that moment with me, and it's informed so much of what I see on a run-of-the-mill day. I also left a little part of me there, on my velvet upholstered chair. Apologies to the cleaning crew.

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You can find Erin Moon actively on Instagram and lurking on Twitter at @erinhmoon. She also has a Hamilton Spreadsheet full of Hammy Goodness available here.