As Hamilton fever winds down, so too has "Ham4Ham," the series of bonus performances that Lin Manuel Miranda, his talented cast, and assorted guest actors and singers have been putting on almost every Wednesday since July 2015 to entertain those gathered outside the theater in the hopes of scoring a last-minute ticket. (The Hamilton lottery sells front-row tickets for $10, ergo, "Hamilton for Hamilton.")
After dozens of performances featuring everything from the Hamilton cast gender-swapping their parts in various songs to other Broadway stars like Audra Mcdonald and Cynthia Erivo subbing in, Ham4Ham has closed up shop.
The final performance comes courtesy of Hamilton star Renée Elise Goldsberry, who’s leaving the role of Angelica — which won her this year’s Tony award for Best Supporting Actress in a musical — on September 3.
To celebrate, she and the Hamilton band broke out a song that Miranda ended up cutting from the musical. Called "Congratulations," it features a searingly sarcastic Angelica taking Hamilton to task after he releases the sordid details of his extramarital affair in "The Reynolds Pamphlet."
"Congratulations!" Goldsberry/Angelica sings, dripping disdain. "You have invented a new kind of stupid, a stupid you can never undo kind of stupid. An ‘open all the cages in the zoo’ kind of stupid. A ‘truly, you didn’t think this through’ kind of stupid…"
The "deleted scene" — not to mention Goldsberry’s effortless voice bringing it to roaring, furious life — is exactly the kind of precious bonus Hamilton fans have been craving ever since the musical became a phenomenon. It’s a fitting ending for a series of live performances that started as a fun experiment, and to that, we can only say (with none of Angelica’s sarcasm), congratulations!
