Hail to the Chief

How Matu Ngaropo has survived and thrived as George Washington in the musical phenomenon Hamilton.

- RUSSELL BAILLIE

If you play George Washington in Hamilton, you are the wise warrior figure. The soldier on his way to becoming a statesman and POTUS No 1. The commanding officer and mentor to the guy with his name on the marquee.

No, the Broadway show that since 2015 has become a pop-culture Mt Rushmore to your fellow Founding Father Alexander Hamilton isn’t about you. But you’re still out front on many of the show’s hip-hop-powered songs, which are delivered at roughly 144 words a minute in 140-plus minutes on stage.

Plus, your Washington gets the best entrance of anyone. Early in Act One, he swaggers on to the sound of Right Hand Man/Here Comes the General, a song that is part Gilbert and Sullivan, part Eminem and part heavyweight fighter ring announcement.

After nearly 700 performances of the Australian production, Matu Ngaropo is not at all sick of the fanfare.

“It never gets old,” he says with a laugh from Whakatāne, where he’s been staying with whānau between the Brisbane and Auckland seasons. “But it can be really overwhelming when that introduction is happening. When I’m walking onto the stage, I am not thinking about anything else except walking to the right place, in the right timing, doing the right choreography, grabbing my sword at the right time and making sure that it’s going into my scabbard … If I listen to the roar of the audience, or the introduction, then I’m not going to be ready to fulfil the moment.”