“The centerfold of Playbill is all about Hamilton, the city,” said Dan Bates, president and CEO of the Greater Hamilton Chamber of Commerce. “The ad is, ‘You’ve seen the show, now see the city.’”
The two-page ad has images of Hamilton art, culture and shopping, with a shot of Mike Neal, of Neal’s Famous BBQ, offering a plate of his ribs.
“With selling out an entire three-week engagement, it’s just under 63,000 tickets,” said spokesperson Elizabeth Truitt Armstrong. “Our theater seats about 2,600, and we have 24 performances.”
The musical opens Tuesday and runs through March 10.
“That’s really exciting to pull that into Hamilton, where we have a giant statue on our main street,” Bates said. “The play is obviously a top-notch hit, and we feel that Hamilton is a really great, unique place to visit.”
It’s good timing for the musical to be here now, because “now, we have stuff for people to really come and see,” he added. “Not just a couple of things, but somebody can come here and easily spend a day or a weekend exploring Hamilton.”
For example, he said, there’s Hamilton’s new recreation center downtown that is Marcum Park, which last year was named one of five Great Public Spaces in America; the Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park & Museum; and the Fitton Center for Creative Arts. The city also has a variety of new shops and restaurants, including A Game Knight, a tavern stocked with close to 500 games.
In recent years, Hamilton proponents have done several things to increase the excitement in the city. Among those things, the RiversEdge Amphitheater in Marcum Park offers summer evening concerts, most of them free. One of those concerts inspired a national music writer to coin the term “Jamilton” for the city.
The Fitton Center recently added a 150-seat cinema with a 24-foot-wide screen with high-end projector and 5.1 Dolby surround sound, where all-time-great films, such as “Citizen Kane,” will be shown, as well as cult films like “Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
Hamilton, among other things, was the first U.S. secretary of the treasury, who is given much credit for establishing the nation’s financial system. He was a key promoter of the U.S. Constitution and a senior aide to Gen. George Washington during the American Revolution. He was shot and mortally wounded by Vice President Aaron Burr in a duel in 1804.
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