I knew “Hamilton” was different when, during the first week of previews 10 years ago, Hennessy threw them a party.
Not the usual pinot grigio and martinis affair at Angus. No, this hot show was being feted by the French cognac brand beloved by rappers.
The atypically luxe early bash for a new Broadway musical with no big names was at URBO, which used to be on West 42nd Street.
Creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda was there with cast members including Leslie Odom, Jr., Renée Elise Goldsberry, Anthony Ramos and Daveed Diggs — dancing and sipping curated cocktails.
I thought of that infectious mood Wednesday when the hit hip-hop musical about founding father and New York Post creator Alexander Hamilton celebrated its 10th anniversary at the Richard Rodgers Theatre with a reunion followed by a high-energy gathering on 46th Street. QuestLove DJ’d from the balcony.
That Hennessy soiree in July 2015 was like being at a Hollywood movie premiere, only none of these people were famous yet. The show hadn’t even opened. The Diamond-certified album was still two months away.
However, Henny knew history was happenin’ in Manhattan. (So did The Post, by the way. We sponsored its off-Broadway run downtown at the Public).
That glam night kicked off a year of beaming revelry around town that would make a royal coronation blush. “Hamilton” soon went on to take over the city and the country.
And the actors, like the original young cast of “Saturday Night Live” 40 years earlier, became overnight sensations.
It was an unbelievably exciting time to be in New York — thanks, in no small part, to Broadway and that musical.
Last week’s first-decade festivities brought me back to opening night in 2015 when Eliza actress Phillipa Soo stood by Peter Dinklage and Sarah Jessica Parker at Pier 60 as a special fireworks display blazed over the Hudson set to the show’s music and ending with “New York, New York.”
(“The Outsiders” and “Maybe Happy Ending” didn’t get one of those.)
Or the time Miranda jumped on a stool at the Glass House Tavern on 47th Street the evening his show won the Pulitzer, and bought the whole bar a round of drinks.
And that June, when crowds were finally booted from the show’s Tonys night victory rager at Tavern on the Green around 7 a.m. when the sun came up.
Their egalitarian “Ham4Ham” concerts that here held regularly outside the theater, where lottery winners could get $10 tickets and everybody enjoyed a free show, turned into an event that spilled onto the street.
“Hamilton,” in its lyrics and its onstage and offstage spirit, exemplified NYC at its best: “The greatest city in the world” where everybody knows “how lucky we are to be alive right now.”
A show about New York, made in New York by New Yorkers.
At the moment it exploded, Miranda’s musical was — like John’s of Bleecker Street or the High Line or the US Open — a point of enormous local pride. Everybody was in a clamor to see it. Disney shelled out $75 million for a video of the stage production.
How lucky we were to have a must-see show that enlivened the entire city, whether they could get in or not, instead of today’s stuffy plays starring exhausted celebs for the deep-pocketed few.
And no musical, try though they might, has been able to capture the popular imagination in the same way since.
“Hamilton” is still packing ’em in and will for a long time. But Broadway could sure use another one. How much longer do we have to “wait for it”?
