Warriors

Lin-Manuel Miranda & Eisa Davis

When I walk people through the history of the American musical theatre (which I do, at the drop of a hat), I tell them that it all revolves around four radical composers who each redefined the American musical: Oscar Hammerstein II (who was technically a lyricist who worked with composer Richard Rogers), Stephen Sondheim, Jonathan Larson, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. (I would identify the specific galvanizing shows as Oklahoma!, Company, Rent, and Hamilton. Hmmm, all one-word titles.)

In our current climate of reactionary disapproval, Miranda has been embraced and debased alternately by youth culture, but his meteoric impact saved the American musical from a long period of pastiche and Europop. (Sadly, now Paul & Pasek are destroying it again, the best they can.) Hamilton was, is, and always will remain an iconic tectonic shift in Broadway. Afterwards, however, we haven’t had a full-length Miranda musical. We did get his astounding directorial debut film (about Jonathan Larson), tick…tick…BOOM! and a lot of Disney songs. (Seriously, though, “How Far I’ll Go” is amazing.)

Well, rejoice! That has changed…kinda. Cowritten by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis, Warriors is not a Broadway show…yet. It was written expressly to be a concept album. (The same trajectory was taken by the incredible Jesus Christ Superstar long ago.) It is a gender-flipped adaptation of the 1979 movie—not the 1965 novel, as originally reported. The plot is simple (and irresistible): all the street gangs of New York City are called to a peaceful conclave far uptown, where a charismatic figure named Cyrus almost convinces them to enact a full-time truce. Suddenly, Cyrus is shot dead, and the leader of the Warriors (the resident gang of Coney Island) is the only witness to the shooter. The real culprit sees this and immediately spreads panicked gossip that it was the Warriors themselves who shot Cyrus. With every gang in the city after them for revenge, they must make the perilous journey across all of NYC to their home turf. (For those of us who have no idea where these places are—or that Coney Island is not apparently an island—the album really needed some sort of map of the city. That’s my main complaint.)

Compiling a girl gang version of the Warriors, the creators enlisted Hamilton alums Phillipa Soo and Jasmine Cephas-Jones (daughter of Ron Cephas Jones) and Hadestown standout Amber Gray (another show that began as a concept album, incidentally) as well as newer talent like the show’s scene-stealing ingenue, Julia Harriman. But check out the names that populate the rest of the cast: Lauryn Hill, Colman Domingo, Marc Anthony, Billy Porter, Michaela Jaé, Busta Rhymes, Nas, Cam’ron, RZA, Ghostface Killah, and many more!

The album (already being rewritten as a Broadway show) uses a wide array of musical styles to represent the diversity of the many NYC gangs: salsa, meringue, rap, ska, funk, hip-hop, R&B, metal, boy band, K-Pop, and dancehall. The conceit works, especially because we don’t see the action. It helps us differentiate the many opponents the Warriors face on their odyssey. It also creates a multi-textured-but-coherent album that pays homage to about a dozen musical styles that have all influenced Miranda and the melting pot of current popular music.

Warriors has some great songs: “Survive the Night”, “Sick of Runnin’”, “Call Me Mercy”, “We Got You”, and “Same Train Home”. It includes some big, cinematic (yet invisible) moments like a war-bus, a Molotov cocktail explosion, and some brutal fights. It does seem short, though, at under an hour and a half. A Broadway version would have to be lengthened—and the promise of new material from that process is very exciting. Finally, as you probably guessed, the language of the lyrics is very adult and full of f-bombs.

While I don’t regard this as a project that has found its final form, it’s an exciting beginning with some memorable hooks and fantastically spirited performances.