Critic at Leisure

It’s hot downtown! The Public’s ‘Hamilton’ and Irish Rep’s ‘Da!’

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It’s worth braving the elements when your destination is thrilling theater. Visiting this pair of vastly different entertainments will surely dazzle all your senses: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s rap-pop driven, rapturously clever “Hamilton” is genius made visible and haunting and beautifully executed. And the Irish Repertory Theater’s exquisite revival of Hugh Leonard’s haunting Tony-winning “Da” will break your heart a little — and summon memories of your own “life with father”— whether past or ongoing.
First performed by the Rep in 1996, “Da” is set in Dublin in 1968 and in times remembered when Hugh Leonard lost his quixotic “Da.” It took some decades for this haunting, life-enriching memory play to flow from the playwright’s mix of emotions about his controlling, multi-faceted sire. But when they did the torrent of Leonard’s feelings gave the world a haunting portrait of a man whose sometime vindictive actions in retrospect revealed a caring heart in a stubborn mind.
In Leonard’s hark-back, son Charlie is played as a grown man by the superb Ciarin O’Reilly, both winning and troubling your mind as his Da comes to terms when he’s summoned to return to the family apartment immediately after his father’s death to tend to his burial. With the lone visitor an irritating childhood acquaintance who’d made good, once the ‘spirit” of Da roars onto the scene (the evening’s most haunting performance is delivered by magnificent Paul O’Brien). The play explodes. Charlie’s beloved step-mom is next to come home (memorable Fiana Toibin), swelling the playwright’s memories of her long-suffering emotional angst, squelched down the decades by her controlling spouse. In an equally fine turn, Adam Petherbridges young Charlie soon also shows up — and we watch him go through the challenges it took for the playwright to finally defy his Da and set off to pursue a life and world of his own.
Every family bears its own saga, but Leonard, who died in 2009, in expunging his family ghosts — including his younger self — shares some likely painful — but also bittersweet — and comic memories of what formed his own psyche; and led him to become the hugely observant chronicler he was, writing successfully for television, film, radio and The Irish Times until his death at 83. The emotional vicissitudes of the playwright may not mirror the branches of your own family tree — although they did mine in re-awakening memories of a totally “larger than life” dad who also very much marched to his own drummer; Though down vastly different paths than DA we come to know and appreciate in this moving quasi-autobiographical visit down some of Leonard’s memory lanes. Extended now thru April 5 at the Irish Repertory Theater in their seasonal “home” at the DR2 Theatre in Union Square while renovating their own performance space. Tickets at (212) 727-2727. A must see “memory to cherish!”
A spoofing rap wrap of the Founding Fathers: ‘Hamilton’

Audacious, Pulitzer Prize-brilliant. And surely headed to Broadway — or an eternal stay at the Public — genius playwright/composer/actor Lin Manuel-Miranda turns America’s early history askew — revealing every wart on the body politic that nevertheless formed a union still thriving as the dominant force in the currently challenged ‘civilized’ world of today.
What we learn in this altogether gripping, challenging — and yes — glorious entertainment from the ever fertile mind of Miranda is that times change — but ambition and ego doesn’t — and deceit and back-stabbing have woven a steady path through history: Though arguably never before with the galvanizing spirit of “Hamilton!”
The thrilling musical sent me straight to Wikipedia to check out Miranda’s facts. The playwright/composer’s vision — adapted from Rouchernow’s 2004 biography of one of the most astute of the Founding Fathers — may have changed some of its leaders from white to black, and given “Hamilton” a rap and contemporary score — but what remains unchanged in its 2 hours and 45 minutes are the tumultuous, backstabbing lives of the men who shepherded the United States to fruition — with Hamilton, until he chose to lose his duel with nemesis Aaron Burr — a prime player in its creation.
In the musical’s opening moments it’s posed by a jealous Burr (a quixotic, determined, frustrated Leslie Odom, Jr.) who ponders (to paraphrase) “how does a bastard orphan son of a whore, a Scotsman dumped in the Caribbean, grow up in squalor to be a hero and a scholar? Miranda, as Hamilton — at once determined — wearing the emotions from his turbulent mind in effusive opinions he never quite learns to control as he climbs his way into prominent political positions, also dances and sings and marries, fathers a son, cheats on his wife — a true forbearer of political entitlement brought down the ages where we learn to appreciate what he did accomplish
Much more to share on this best of all possible entertainments, spectacular in all its dimensions: brilliant choreography, costuming, set, performances. Name it, you’ll cheer it at the Public! Bravo Miranda! Bravo all! (425 Lafayette St., 212-967-7555, Public Theater through May 3.