The English-language production opens in Busan in December before an eight-week run in Seoul
Broadway hit “Hamilton” will make its Korean debut in December as the first stop on a new world tour.
Since opening on Broadway in August 2015, “Hamilton” has earned a record 16 Tony nominations and won 11 awards in 2016, including best musical.
Its cast album became the first to be certified diamond in the US, for 10 million units, and has spent more than 500 weeks on the Billboard 200. Now the show is coming to Korea for the first time, as the first stop on a new world tour.
The English-language production opens Dec. 17 at Dream Theatre in Busan and runs through Jan. 16, then moves to the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts in Seoul from Jan. 21 to March 20.
“As a producer, but also as an audience member who has waited for this show, it is a thrilling moment,” said Shin Dong-won, CEO of S&Co, which is producing the Korean run. The company had long considered a Korean staging impossible, he said.
Lead producer Jeffrey Seller said the show’s success in cities including Manila, Singapore, London, Sydney and Hamburg convinced him that a world tour was needed to bring “Hamilton” to more of Asia and Europe.
Jason Arrow leads the cast as Alexander Hamilton, a role he played for four years in the show’s 2021 Australian premiere and its first international tour. Jay Perry, who won best actor at the Black British Theatre Awards for playing Aaron Burr in the West End, returns to that role. Most of the company has appeared in earlier productions on Broadway, in the West End and in Australia, and on tours.
Written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and based on Ron Chernow’s biography, “Hamilton” traces the rise and fall of Alexander Hamilton, one of America’s founding fathers and its first treasury secretary, through 46 songs that blend hip-hop, jazz, R&B and Broadway styles.
Ticket sales open Nov. 11, with prices ranging from 70,000 won to 220,000 won.
gypark@heraldcorp.com
