When Hamilton premiered on Disney+ in July, it included a scene that was omitted from the cast recording: John Laurens’s death. A filmed version of the stage show of the same name, Hamilton is a rap musical written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and based on the life of Alexander Hamilton, the United States’ first secretary of the treasury. Along with Hercules Mulligan and the Marquis de Lafayette, John Laurens is one of the revolutionaries that Hamilton meets early on in the show with whom he fights in the American War of Independence. As with many other major characters in Hamilton, the actor playing Laurens (Anthony Ramos in the Disney+ version) traditionally adopts another character in Act II, in his case Hamilton’s ill-fated son, Philip.
Being a sung-through musical, almost all of the text of Hamilton is present on the cast recording. This, coupled with the comprehensive lyric booklet bundled with physical copies, helped the show’s popularity early on, as it allowed listeners to grasp the entire story arc through the album alone, as opposed to some musical soundtracks which leave gaps in the storytelling, especially around the second act. Naturally, certain elements of Alexander Hamilton’s life are condensed or ignored by the musical for purposes of narrative flow. But there was a scene present in the stage version (and now in the Disney+ version) that Miranda opted to leave off of the soundtrack album.
Near the end of Act I, Eliza brings Hamilton news of John Laurens’s death, reading a letter from his father, who relates that his son was killed by retreating British troops after the war had ended. Originally found between “Dear Theodosia” and “Non-Stop,” this moment isn’t present on the cast album, and while the gap isn’t terribly noticeable if you aren’t looking for it, it is the only significant omission. Lin-Manuel Miranda has said in a Tumblr post that the decision was motivated in part by the fact that the scene has some of the only truly spoken dialogue in the show and in part by the desire to keep some “withheld moments” that would be surprising when seen on stage, an experience that he describes himself having as a young musical theater fan.
Although Hamilton has been much celebrated for its music and lyrics, the stagecraft of the original production was similarly acclaimed. Thomas Kail, also responsible for the well-received Grease: Live, directed Hamilton in its initial Off-Broadway incarnation and is credited as the director of the current film version streaming on Disney+. His staging for this scene, from Laurens’s subtly ghostly nature to Hamilton’s gobsmacked exit, provides rich context to the reprise of “Tomorrow There’ll Be More of Us” that might not come across from the audio alone.
At first blush, Miranda’s decision may come across as a bit of a slap in the face to completionists, and his post in which he explains his reasoning feels almost apologetic. However, as he points out, in addition to satisfying practical concerns, this omission functions as a loving homage to the similar decisions made by many great Broadway cast albums. Thankfully for viewers, Hamilton has a leg up on most of those shows, because it now has a widely available live recording. With that in mind, Miranda’s tribute to live theater becomes more inclusive (albeit somewhat undermined), with everyone now privy to the secret (provided they have a Disney+ subscription). And the scene itself isn’t insignificant, both because it gives John Laurens’s story a clear, tragic ending, and because Hamilton’s last line of having “so much work to do” in response to bad news is as succinct a summation of his character as is ever given.
