Hamilton (Touring)

A holiday read that became a Broadway machine

Lin-Manuel Miranda picked up Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton in 2008, on holiday in Mexico, and decided the life of a Caribbean-born orphan who talked and wrote his way into the American founding was a hip-hop story. The first public airing came at a White House evening of poetry and spoken word on 12 May 2009, where Miranda performed an early version of what became the show's opening number. Six years of workshops followed.

The finished musical opened off-Broadway at the Public Theater on 17 February 2015 and transferred uptown to the Richard Rodgers Theatre, opening on 6 August 2015. In 2016 it took eleven Tony Awards from sixteen nominations, along with the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Grammy for best musical theatre album. The London production opened at the Victoria Palace Theatre on 21 December 2017 and won seven Olivier Awards the following year.

The score, and the machinery built around it

The show is sung and rapped almost end to end — 47 numbers moving through hip-hop, R&B, jazz and older Broadway idioms, with Alex Lacamoire's orchestrations holding the seams together. Thomas Kail's production puts the company on David Korins's two-tier wooden gallery with a double revolve set into the floor; Paul Tazewell's costumes keep the period silhouette while the movement does not. Andy Blankenbuehler's choreography uses the revolve as a narrative device rather than decoration, running bodies backwards through time during duels and letters. Howell Binkley's lighting and Nevin Steinberg's sound design complete the package that every company, touring or resident, reproduces.

The original Broadway cast album, released in September 2015, has had a longer commercial life than the production's awards haul. In the week of 7 May 2025 it became the first cast recording to log 500 weeks on the Billboard 200. The filmed stage version, shot with the original cast, went to Disney+ in July 2020 and was given a cinema release in 2025.

Four road companies, and a first British tour

Rather than one tour, the production has run a fleet of them, each named after a character. The Angelica company opened in San Francisco in March 2017. The Philip company followed in Seattle on 15 February 2018. The And Peggy company began in Puerto Rico on 11 January 2019 and finished in Toronto on 20 August 2023. A fourth, Eliza, played Los Angeles from 27 August 2021 to 20 March 2022. Angelica resumed at the Hollywood Pantages in September 2024 and is the company now on the road in North America.

Britain and Ireland got a touring production for the first time in the same period. It opened in Cardiff on 24 November 2024 and worked through Bradford, Southampton, Liverpool, Sunderland, Plymouth and Norwich before finishing at the Theatre Royal Glasgow, where it played from 29 October to 27 December 2025. Reviewing the Glasgow opening, a critic noted that Korins's full set — revolve included — had made the transfer onto a smaller stage intact, with Marley Fenton as Hamilton and Billy Nevers as a notably gentler Burr.

Standing now: an anniversary, then a long route

The Broadway production marked ten years on 6 August 2025 with two performances at the Richard Rodgers. The matinee released more than a thousand lottery seats at $10; the evening was invitation-only and raised close to $3m for the Immigrants: We Get the Job Done Coalition, split across thirteen organisations working on immigration legal and social services. Miranda, speaking about the benefit, put it plainly: "Immigrants are the lifeblood of America." By that date the show had played 3,535 Broadway performances, making it the sixteenth-longest-running production in Broadway history.

The Angelica company's current route is unusually long-dated. It opened at the Straz Center in Tampa on 21 October 2026 and plays there until 8 November, then Fort Lauderdale from 10 to 22 November, Artis—Naples from 24 to 29 November and Jacksonville from 1 to 13 December. The longest stop of the run follows: the National Theatre in Washington, DC from 15 December 2026 to 7 February 2027. After that come Richmond from 23 February to 7 March, Baltimore from 9 to 28 March, then Dayton, Lincoln, Minneapolis, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, San Jose, Reno, a month at the Los Angeles Pantages and Albuquerque, carrying the company through September 2027.

The timing has not gone unremarked. A Tampa Bay Times piece on 21 October 2026 built its coverage of the engagement around how a musical about the construction of American government reads during the polarisation of the 2026 election season — a question critics have been putting to the show, rather than to its ticket sales, for several years now. In London, meanwhile, the Victoria Palace production is selling performances into October 2027.

What the show is like in late 2026

Tyler Fauntleroy has anchored the touring company through 2026, playing the title role in Chicago, Kansas City, Durham and now Tampa, and the reviews have been consistent about what he does with it: ambition and volatility rather than charm alone. The Burr opposite him has changed during the run — Jimmie "J.J." Jeter through the spring stops, Deon'Te Goodman in Tampa, reviewed there as a study in caution curdling into resentment. Lily Soto is playing Eliza in Florida, with Marja Harmon as Angelica, Christian Magby doubling Lafayette and Jefferson, Eddie Ortega as Mulligan and Madison, and Matt Bittner as George III, a role he has held across the tour.

The production runs around two hours and forty-five minutes with one interval, and there is no support act: the show is its own event, built as two acts with the same design, orchestrations and staging as the Broadway original. Critics on this leg have mostly argued about room acoustics rather than the work. The Kansas City reviewer in February 2026 found the Music Hall's upper levels swallowed the quieter passages; the Durham critic in May likened the atmosphere to a rock concert; the Tampa reviewer in October called the turntable staging proof that storytelling needs less spectacle than imagination, and then spent a paragraph on audience members singing along and using phones, which is its own kind of review.