‘Hamilton’ coming to Wichita
The celebrated musical “Hamilton” will be coming to Wichita, a prospect deemed unlikely a year ago.
The American Theatre Guild, the Kansas City group behind the Broadway in Wichita series, announced Tuesday afternoon that it would bring “Hamilton” to Wichita in its 2021-2022 series.
The play has been eagerly awaited in Wichita, skipped over for performances until now because of the city’s small market size and stage limitations of Century II, the city’s performing arts center.
The hip-hop musical centers on the life of Alexander Hamilton, a founding father of the United States who served as the first Treasury secretary and was shot to death in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr.
It’s based on a best-selling biography by historian Ron Chernow and features rap music by Lin-Manuel Miranda. The play opened on Broadway Aug. 1, 2015 and won 11 Tony Awards.
News of the play’s Wichita premiere was included in an announcement of the 2020-2021 season of Broadway in Wichita.
Hamilton will actually come as part of the 2021-2022 season, the announcement said. The date has not been set, but the announcement urged theater patrons to guarantee access to tickets by buying season tickets for the upcoming 2020-21 season, which beings in October.
The offerings include a return engagement of “The Lion King,” which first ran in Wichita in 2012 following a $2.3 million renovation of Century II’s Concert Hall, done in part to accommodate the show’s complicated staging requirements.
The other plays scheduled for the 2020-21 season include:
▪ “Fiddler on the Roof,” Feb.5-6, 2021, a classic musical about Jewish villagers trying to preserve their heritage while being persecuted in Czarist Russia.
▪ “An Officer and a Gentleman,” March 15-17, 2021, a stage version of the 1982 film about Naval aviator cadets trying to navigate their tough training regimen and complicated personal lives.
▪ “Summer, the Donna Summer Musical,” April 19-21, 2021, based on the musical success and tempestuous private life of the chart-topping star of the disco era.
“Hamilton” bypassed Wichita a year ago in a tour that included stops in Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Omaha.
American Theatre Guild officials, who presented the Kansas City show, said then that the main problem in Wichita is ticket sales.
Touring companies often use blockbuster musicals to entice customers to buy tickets for the entire season of four to five different shows. Wichita isn’t a “full-week market” where shows can run for a Tuesday-through-Sunday schedule with season-ticket holders for every performance.
Wichita City Hall laid the blame on the Century II in a Facebook post, “due to the facility not being able to accommodate their stage needs.”
Century II’s stage is technically too shallow — by about 11 feet and 2 inches — for “Hamilton,” said John D’Angelo, then the city’s director of arts and cultural services, the department that oversees the city-owned performing arts center.
The failure to land “Hamilton” has been cited repeatedly as a selling point of the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan group, which is proposing to tear down the 51-year-old venue and replace it with new performing arts and convention facilities.
This story was originally published March 3, 2020 at 3:45 PM.
