Hamilton returns to Sydney: Lead actor Jason Arrow reveals toll role has taken after more than 750 shows

Jason Arrow never had a number in mind when it came to playing Alexander Hamilton in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s acclaimed stage production.

But with the return of the musical to Sydney this month, he hit a milestone. The first night of previews was his 751st performance. He originated the role in Australia when it first hit the harbour city in 2021 before touring it to Melbourne, Brisbane, Auckland, Manila, Abu Dhabi and Singapore.

But his goal was just to keep doing it — to keep being part of the groundbreaking story of one of America’s founding fathers in a musical cornucopia of history, politics, ambition, hubris and personal tragedy.

The Perth-raised performer has been with the character for so long that aspects of Alexander Hamilton have become part of Arrow the actor.

“It’s mostly to do with how fast he thinks and how fast he talks,” Arrow told The Nightly ahead of Hamilton’s opening night in Sydney.

“I’m not someone who gets stressed, I’m not a stressy person. But I started having panic attacks a year ago and it was like, ‘What’s going on?’”

Arrow started to get itchy skin and other physical symptoms. It was a new experience for him and he had to take up meditation to slow down his thought processes.

“I’m much better now, but it’s just weird,” he explained.

“The show literally shifted my brain chemistry into thinking really quickly because every night I had to do that and talk fast. I was speaking really fast in interviews too, and I was like, ‘I need to slow down’.”

That speed is a classic trait of the Alexander Hamilton of Miranda’s play. The character is a man so intent on getting things done as fast as he can. Hamilton had an elite mind but he also had an obsessive drive.

From the songs Non-Stop to My Shot and more, Hamilton felt the pressure of destiny and legacy, and it pushed him to always do more, more and more.

Arrow wanted to forge a connection between Hamilton and an Australian audience that didn’t rely on American patriotism or history, which he said you could lean on with a US audience.

But when the production first opened in Sydney more than three years ago, he felt a distance between the character and the audience.

“It was like people were confused by why this guy was liked or why he’s been praised.

“There are moments in the show that was like, ‘Oh, he did this, he did that. He was flawed but he did this and it’s great, it’s great, it’s great’. But it didn’t feel like that with the audience, I wasn’t getting that response from people.”

After the season started, it was cut short when NSW was plunged into its second COVID lockdowns. Arrow said that allowed him to look deeper at the few shows he had done, and if there wasn’t something about the character he could bring to the fore.

He found the insights in the early songs of Hamilton, especially the first number which goes into his family history, his abandonment and this desire to prove himself.

“He never had a family so there are moments through the show that I try and reference back to the start when he’s trying to befriend Burr and the other guys,” Arrow explained.

“There are moments where he has doubts, not about himself but his social ability to interact with these other people.

“He doesn’t doubt himself as a person because that’s not the character, but I think he doubts his social connections.

“And then in the second act, that’s gone and it’s focused on making him into that quintessential version of himself.”

Arrow said it makes the character more relatable in Australia, Asia and the Middle East, where Hamilton’s “aggressiveness” and “bullheadedness” doesn’t have the benefit of fitting into a wider, accepted tapestry of American patriotism.

He didn’t focus on that approach until the Melbourne run, so the Hamilton he’s bringing back to Sydney is not the same one that graced the stage before.

It’s also a different show because many of the principal cast have changed since it last played at the Lyric Theatre in Pyrmont.

Callan Purcell has taken over the role of Hamilton’s antagonist, Aaron Burr, from Lyndon Watts, Vidya Makan has replaced Chloe Zuel as Eliza, Googoorewon Knox has swapped in for Matu Ngaropo as George Washington while Gerard-Luke Malgas takes on the dual role of Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson, replacing Victory Ndukwe.

The changes keep the experience fresh and different for Arrow. “You can’t do the same thing with new people, they have a different energy,” he said.

But the second reason is that after more than 750 shows, he still isn’t satisfied with his performance. In that, he is like the character that he plays.

“Every time I finish a show, or even when I’m in the show as I’m doing it, I’ll do a line and I’ll be like, ‘That’s not the one, we’ll find a different way to do that’. I’m always trying to make it better,” he said.

He’s been satisfied perhaps twice, and one of them was the first night of the Sydney previews this round. But he knows not to expect it more often.

“If that ever happens more than a few weeks in a row, then I think that means I’m done with the show, my time will be up. But I highly doubt it’ll ever happen.”

Hamilton is playing now at the Sydney Lyric Theatre