On Tuesday the 9th of September 2025, Leslie Odom Jr made his highly anticipated return to the Hamilton stage. Stepping back into the pivotal role that launched his career, Odom Jr started his limited series of shows as Aaron Burr with a powerful performance that moved both the seated and global audience. His display is reminiscent of the first time he stepped onto the Richard Rogers stage. This leads us to the question: what has changed since then, and, perhaps more importantly, what has not?
Hamilton: An American Musical is a biographical adaptation based on the life of Alexander Hamilton, one of America’s Founding Fathers. Through a variety of musical numbers, the nearly three-hour long show details his involvement in early American political history. We are privy to the intricacies of Hamilton’s life, including his marriage with Elizabeth Schuyler, his affair with Maria Reynolds, and his contributions to the American Revolution. Lin-Manuel Miranda started developing the musical in 2008 after reading Ron Chernow’s book, Alexander Hamilton, and it took him seven years to complete the version we know and love today. Miranda drew on various genres as inspiration for the music, including hip-hop, R&B, and more traditional showtunes.
Hamilton was first performed on the 20th of January 2015 before opening on the 17th of February in the same year. Miranda played the titular role of Alexander Hamilton and was accompanied by an impressive cast featuring Leslie Odom Jr as Aaron Burr, Phillipa Soo as Elizabeth Schulyer, and Jonathan Groff as King George III, among others. The musical moved into the Richard Rogers Theatre on Broadway and had its first preview on the 13th of July 2015. The show officially opened to the public less than a month later on the 6th of August. The original cast ended their run in July 2016, but the musical has remained on the Richard Rogers stage ever since. Crowds were attracted to the fresh retelling of American history from the get-go, which ensured the show’s continued success.
Part of what makes the musical so popular is the fact that a professionally shot version of the show, also known as a pro-shot, was released on Disney+ in 2020. In a time when people were confined to the walls of their homes, the release of Hamilton was a saving grace for many. It allowed viewers to escape from their realities for three hours and served as a “gateway drug” to the musical theatre genre for many. The production is extremely popular on social media platforms, specifically TikTok, with fans making edits of the characters and using clips of the songs in other videos. Fans have used snippets of “Wait for It”, “Satisfied”, “Best of Wives, Best of Women”, and “My Shot” on TikTok, which has made the audios trend on the app and has brought more attention to the biographical adaptation of Alexander Hamilton’s story.
Even though the production is about Hamilton, Odom Jr arguably steals the show as Burr. Miranda’s choice to have Burr narrate the show added to the allure of Odom Jr’s character, bringing him to the forefront of everyone’s minds. Audiences around the world fell in love with Aaron Burr, making Odom Jr one of the most popular on-stage actors of the 21st century. Perhaps this is why his return as Burr has been met with such enthusiasm.
Miranda described Hamilton as being the story of “America then, as told by America now”, and this is clearly evident in the way the musical is presented to the audience. In the production, Burr is a representation for what America used to be – rooted in tradition, Christian values, and nationalism. The direct foil to this is Hamilton, who represents what America could be – a global superpower fighting for the rights of themselves and others. The idea of Burr versus Hamilton, or America then versus what it could have been, is what made the musical stand out in 2016. Even though the production was set in the late 1700s, audiences in 2016 could relate to the socio-political environment in which the show existed. A performance rife with patriotism, political action, and traditional ideals sounded eerily similar to the current political climate of 2016.
When current president of the United States Donald Trump was elected in 2016, the US, and therefore the world, was in one of the more conservative periods in recent history. Fast forward to 2025, and you will find that a similar pattern has emerged. Once again, Trump is in the highest form of office in the country, and the world has returned to conservatism in full force. With Odom Jr returning to Broadway as Burr, one cannot help but compare 2016 to 2025. Both were years that saw Trump as US president, both were years marked by conservatism, and both were years rife with global conflict.
Leslie Odom Jr taking back the role of Aaron Burr, even for a short period of time, brings us right back to 2016 in all of its bottle flipping, “Carpool Karaoke” glory. This piece of political commentary will live on and tell the story of what the Founding Fathers of the US fought for. While we live alongside it, we need to ask ourselves: what is happening to the world we live in, and what does the future have in store for us?
