Skip to content
  • Subscribe
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Youtube
  • Instagram
  • Email
  • Home
  • News
  • Opinion
  • Entertainment
  • Features
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe to Ray’s Columns
Suburban Chicagoland

Suburban Chicagoland

Original News, Features & Opinion on Chicago, Illinois and America

  • About
    • About
    • Advertise
    • Our Writers
      • Ray Hanania
      • Bill Lipinski
      • Biography: Aaron Hanania
    • Terms of Service
    • Privacy Policy
    • Reach Out
  • Sections
    • Events
    • Opinion
    • News
    • Features
    • Seniors
    • Comic Strip
  • Library
    • “MIdnight Flight” Online Book
      • Midnight Flight Book Overview
      • Midnight Flight Introduction
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 1
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 2
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 3
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 4
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 5
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 6
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 7
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 8
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 9
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 10
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 11
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 12
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 13
    • Villages, Cities & Towns
    • Federal Office Holders
    • County Officials
    • Legislators
  • Subscribe to Ray’s Columns
  • Comment
  • Podcast
    • Ray Hanania on Politics
    • Two Guys on Politics
    • Hanania on Tiktok
  • News Wire
  • Archive 2004-2013
  • Toggle search form
  • Hastings insurance legislation
    Hastings announces legislation to ensure fair homeowners insurance rates for Illinois families Business
  • Mahnoor Ahmad campaign photo
    Mahnoor Ahmad runs for DuPage County Board seat Democrat
  • Sunday, October 26, the Village of Orland Park formally rededicated its Village Hall in honor of the late former Mayor Fredrick T. Owens
    Village of Orland Park Rededicates Village Hall in Honor of Late Former Mayor Fredrick T. Owens Government
  • Fire at townhome at 13900 block of Berkhansted Court in Orland Park, just before midnight on Monday, Oct. 27, 2025
    Firefighter treated for dehydration battling townhouse fire in Orland Park – no residents injured Fire
  • Firefighters with the Orland Fire Protection District who responded to a fire in an apartment at 15200 block of Al Camino Terrace on Saturday morning said the next day that they did find a kitten that needed respiratory aid that they saved.
    FIRE UPDATE: Fire District releases photos of kitten saved from Orland Park apartment fire Saturday Features
  • two-story apartment building on the 15200 block of El Camino Terrace in Orland Park
    Orland Park apartment fire Saturday morning, no injuries Fire
  • Illinois Senator Michael Hastings addressing the Orland Township Democratic Organization Wednesday Oct. 12, 2022
    Hastings calls for bipartisan action to protect Illinois families from SNAP benefit shutdown Baby Boomers
  • Illinios Industrial Energy Consumers, information ad
    Get information on the Illinois Energy Omnibus Bill in Springfield Business
  • State Senator Mike Porfirio secured over $20 million to support infrastructure improvements and construction in the 11th Senate District.
    Senator Porfirio applauds more than $20 million in infrastructure repairs coming to the 11th District News
  • Dad and daughter reunited Lebving Law firm photo
    Little Girl Recovered and Reunited with Dad After Long Separation Dads' Rights
  • 11-03-25 OFPD Coffee living alone
    Orland Fire hosts meeting on helping Seniors who live alone Nov. 5 Baby Boomers
  • State Senator Michael Hastings introduces law to revive long dormant and degraded Tinley Park Mental Health Center into a Sports Park for the community. Photo courtesy of the State Senate President Don Harmon
    Hastings secures $250,000 grant for Easterseals Academy’s Tinley Park campus Health
  • Chicago ranks as 161st worst city for crime in new national survey Chicago
  • Kat Abughazaleh 9th DIstrict Congress 2026 candidate democrat
    Kat Abughazaleh raises over $520,000 in Q2 of 2025 with more than $630,000 cash on hand for 2026 Democratic primary election elections
  • Silent Threat: The True Dangers of Lithium-Ion Batteries — How to Stay Safe and Respond to a Battery Fire Fire
Oil on canvas portrait of Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Exorbitant Hamilton tickets reflect founding father’s life

Posted on December 5, 2017November 29, 2019 By Ray Hanania No Comments on Exorbitant Hamilton tickets reflect founding father’s life
SHARE THIS STORY
13       1   
 
  
14
Shares

Exorbitant Hamilton tickets reflect founding father’s life

“Hamilton: The Satirical.” More tickets were announced available this week to the politically partisan Broadway musical “Hamilton: An American Musical.” But only the super rich will be able to afford seats that allows them to see the whole stage and even the cheap, obstructed seats will still cost in excess of $200. Hamilton would be slamming the producers in his newspaper editorials if he were alive today

By Ray Hanania

Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of America, was obsessed with building the new nation’s financial system.

He also launched the Federalist Party, founded the Coast Guard, and published the New York Post Newspaper, which if he were alive today would probably use to hold his puke after realizing of the corruption of the American news media system.

Hamilton was such a self-righteous person that after he used his newspaper to repeatedly libel political rival Aaron Burr. Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel and while Hamilton fired his gun into the sky, maybe in arrogance or not believing the system he set up could result in mutual destruction through gun violence, Burr fired right at Hamilton, fatally injuring him.

Oil on canvas portrait of Alexander Hamilton b...
Oil on canvas portrait of Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Hamilton died the next day, on July 12, 1804.

That would have been the end of it except that producer and playright Lin-Manuel Miranda, took a 2004 biography of Hamilton and turned it into a hit musical that brought the iconic Revolutionary War figure into the modern-age of hip-hop, rap and propaganda. (Miranda plays the role of Hamilton in the Broadway performances in New York City.)

And it would be a great play to actually watch, if it wasn’t so expensive to purchase tickets.

This week, Hamilton announced that more tickets would be available for purchase, but many would-be theater-goers probably don’t realize that most of the tickets will cost the equivalent of their children’s education fund. Those tickets that are affordable are categorized as “limited view seating” or “obstructed view.” Check it out for yourself.

“Hamilton: An American Musical” has been on Broadway and in many theaters around the country including Chicago since February 2015.

I’d like to see it. But even with my resources as a successful former journalist, now a columnist and communications consultant, the tickets are way out of my reach.

I’m not paying $500 to watch people in fluffing shirts twist history for the sake of entertainment, and even politics.

Oh, you can purchase cheaper tickets, for about $200 if you are willing to sit behind a column, poll or obstruction — Chicago’s CIBC Theater offers many of these “cheap seat” tickets with the notation that you will have “limited viewseating” or “obstructed viewing.”

“Limited View Seating?” What moron came up with that category of seating for 200 plus dollars?

Ticket costs for Hamilton in Chicago, for "Limited View Seating" at the CIBC theater.
Ticket costs for Hamilton in Chicago, for “Limited View Seating” at the CIBC theater.

Hamilton helped found America 241 years ago with little more than an ink pen and onion paper, and no one in today’s theatrical market, including the Broadway in Chicago theater group can come up with a theater design that allows every seat to view a theatrical performance clearly without visual intrusion?

What the theater does is reserve the great and very expensive seats for Chicago’s hoi polloi, and then offers the trash to everyone else. The peons. The pedestrian and poor masses who sweat hard through their struggles to earn enough money to put food on their table let alone to enjoy a twisted, rhythmic distortion of American history.

Yes, it’s probably entertaining. And yes, everyone should be able to enjoy the theater. But that’s not what happens. In today’s world of outrageous high salaries — we pay athletes tens of millions to catch baseballs and pig skin footballs, and robber baron corporate thieves to not only earn obese salaries but also repulsively massive bonuses.

Yes, the life of the “Rich and Famous” is something to gawk at. But greed is one of the great sins of mankind. It’s not enough to earn what you need to live comfortably. You have to exponentially increase your earnings to become a Master of the Universe.

And those over-indulged, privileged and entitled “MotU’s” can laugh and cheer and swirl expensive French wines as they quote Shakespeare as if they knew him, and flaunt their diamonds, rubies and haughty appellations.

It’s disgusting.

That’s why so many people were upset when in November 2016 one of the Broadway performance cast members, Brandon Dixon, who portrays Aaron Burr in the Broadway show, delivered a stunning political rebuke from the stage to Vice President Mike Pence who had left his seat and was leaving the theater during the curtain call at the end of the play.

According to media reports, Dixon stated from the stage, and surrounded by the cast, “Vice President-elect Pence, we welcome you and we truly thank you for joining us here at ‘Hamilton: An American Musical.’ We really do. We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us. All of us.”

Of course, Dixon was applauded and Pence and the Trump administration were attacked when they questioned the appropriateness of making such outwardly political comments from the stage.

So, you know what. I’m not wasting $600 to get seats that are not obstructed at Chicago’s performance at the CIBC Theater. And I am not spending $90 for seats in the Nose Bleed Section way in the back Balcony where the air is thin, the view-sight is distant, with an angle of descent requires rappelling.

I can just hear my wife telling me as we sit in the cheaper, “limited view seating,” which only allows you to seat apart of the stage, “Honey. I thought Hamilton was in this play. Isn’t he?”

“Yes, dear. He is in the play. But only the super rich can see that part of the stage where he is performing. He’s in that part of the stage that is not in our view from these theater seats.”

“Oh,” she might snicker. “Do theater builders do that on purpose? Create seats that only allow the viewing of 80 percent of the stage?”

“Yes,” I would replay. “It’s the miracle of America that Alexander Hamilton failed to envision when he fired that shot into the sky and was struck in his chest by the bullet from Aaron Burr’s muzzle.”

(Ray Hanania is an award-winning columnist, author and former Chicago City Hall reporter. Email him at [email protected].)

newswire info
  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Ray Hanania
Ray Hanania
Ray Hanania is an award-winning opinion columnist, author & former Chicago City Hall reporter (1977-1992). A veteran who served during the Vietnam War and the recipient of four SPJ Peter Lisagor Awards for column writing, Hanania writes weekly opinion columns on mainstream American & Chicagoland topics for the Southwest News-Herald, Des Plaines Valley News, the Regional News, The Reporter Newspapers, and Suburban Chicagoland.  

His award winning columns can be found at www.HANANIA.COM Subscribe FREE today

Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.

Email Ray Hanania at [email protected].

Follow RayHanania at Twitter
Ray Hanania
Latest posts by Ray Hanania (see all)
  • Hastings announces legislation to ensure fair homeowners insurance rates for Illinois families - October 29, 2025
  • Mahnoor Ahmad runs for DuPage County Board seat - October 29, 2025
  • Village of Orland Park Rededicates Village Hall in Honor of Late Former Mayor Fredrick T. Owens - October 29, 2025
NPV: 43
  • Tweet

SHARE THIS STORY
13       1   
 
  
14
Shares
 
14
Shares
 
 
 13    1    
Blogger, Commentary, Entertainment, Humor, National, Opinion, rayhanania, Theater Tags:Alexander Hamilton, CIBC Theater, entitled, Hamilton: An American Musical, limited view seating, obstructed view seating, outrageous ticket costs, pedestrian, poor, privileged, rich, robber barons, wealthy

Post navigation

Previous Post: Netflix increases fees as programming drops
Next Post: The bullying of Sharon Brannigan

Related Posts

  • Chicago Wolves player Andrew Poturalski. Photo courtesy of the Chicago Wolves. https://www.chicagowolves.com
    Chicago Wolves extend home point streak to 14 games Chicago
  • Chicago Wolves forward David Gust. Photo courtesy of the Chicago Wolves
    First-place Chicago Wolves win fourth game in a row Chicago
  • Raising taxes is never about healthy living Opinion
  • Convicted sex predator Anthony Martin, senior vice president at Cook County Commissioner Sean Morrison's company Morrison Security. Photo courtesy of the Cook County Courts
    Sean Morrison’s judgement questioned in defending sexual predator Blogger
  • Orland Park Trustee Daniel "Dan" Calandriello
    Opinion: Orland Mayor bullies Trustee who asked village to help struggling local businesses Blogger
  • Seth Rudetsky and Audra McDonald in Broadway @ Town Hall – Photo by Sachyn Mital
    Steppenwolf Theater hosts benefit with McDonald-Rudertsky concert Sept. 15 Entertainment

More Related Articles

Indians for Trump activist Mrinalini Kumari with President Trump. Photo courtesy of Mrinalini Kumari. Supporters for Trump and Biden discuss the presidential election on live Arab Radio Friday Editors Pick
Lyons concert series returns Entertainment
More than 30,000 people attended the four-day Mexican Independence Day celebration hosted by Town President Larry Dominick and the Town of Cic bro, held from Thursday thur Sunday, Sept. 12 - 15, 2019. More than 30,000 people attended the festival and viewed the two hour long parade which featured more than 30 floats. Photo courtesy of the Town of Cicero Cicero celebrates Mexican Independence Day Parade Entertainment
Flags in Public Plaza. Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania Fear and dread in the USA Blogger
A display of the old Garfield Goose & Friends Children's Television series, which broadcast from 1955 until 1976, at the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago. Photo courtesy of Aaron Hanania Missing that simpler life Blogger
Jussie Smollett, Hollywood actor and accused liar. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia America sending out wrong messages locally and internationally Blogger

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Login with your Social ID
  • OPINION
  • Cook County Treasurer Maria Papas
    Your Mortgage Company May Pay Your Taxes — But You Still Need to Watch
    October 17, 2025
  • Mohammed Faheem The Lightning Strike Radio Show small
    The Politicization of the Nobel Peace Prize — and Trump’s Fury Over Losing Again
    October 11, 2025
  • 06-04-25 Two Guys on Politics Background Zoom LOGO with images
    Video Podcast: Trump Kimmel Kirk Great American Divide Illegal Aliens polling and Illegal Aliens and ICE
    September 20, 2025
  • Illinois House Speaker Emanuel "Chris" Welch speaking at a West Side affordable housing dedication
    Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, one of the best candidates to become Illinois Governor
    September 7, 2025
  • Cook County Treasurer Maria Papas
    What You’re Missing on Your Property Tax Bill
    September 5, 2025
Subscribe to Ray Hanania's column graphic

Enter Your Email to Subscribe to Ray Hanania’s Columns

  • The-Kings-Pawn-Book-300-x-300.png

Mohammed Faheem The Lightning Strike Radio

  • NEWS
  • Hastings insurance legislation
    Hastings announces legislation to ensure fair homeowners insurance rates for Illinois families
    October 29, 2025
  • Mahnoor Ahmad campaign photo
    Mahnoor Ahmad runs for DuPage County Board seat
    October 29, 2025
  • Sunday, October 26, the Village of Orland Park formally rededicated its Village Hall in honor of the late former Mayor Fredrick T. Owens
    Village of Orland Park Rededicates Village Hall in Honor of Late Former Mayor Fredrick T. Owens
    October 29, 2025
  • Fire at townhome at 13900 block of Berkhansted Court in Orland Park, just before midnight on Monday, Oct. 27, 2025
    Firefighter treated for dehydration battling townhouse fire in Orland Park – no residents injured
    October 28, 2025
  • Firefighters with the Orland Fire Protection District who responded to a fire in an apartment at 15200 block of Al Camino Terrace on Saturday morning said the next day that they did find a kitten that needed respiratory aid that they saved.
    FIRE UPDATE: Fire District releases photos of kitten saved from Orland Park apartment fire Saturday
    October 26, 2025
John Kass Columns

Order the book PoweR PR; Ethnic Activists Guide to Strategic Communications

YOUTUBE VIDEOS

CLICK TO SUBSCRIBE TO RAY HANANIA'S YOUTUBE VIDEOS


Click here to view the video on YouTube or use the widget below.

Follow Ray Hanania at
Twitter
Facebook
TitkTok
BlueSky
RayHanania Columns

Creative Commons License
All works on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Do not edit original work. Give credit to the original source.

Categories

Copyright © 2022 Suburban Chicagoland & Urban Strategies Group

Powered by PressBook Premium theme