Hamilton

I caught up with Peter Matthew Smith by phone and asked him to tell us more about playing King George III, the musical's regal comic relief.

I'm happy to have made it that far, because in the world of theatre it's rare that you can have the opportunity to stay in a show that long, and I'm lucky enough that this particular role in the show is suited for longevity. I'm not dancing eight shows a week like the ensemble, where my body is saying, "Stop." All I'm doing is singing three songs and it's basically the same song with different lyrics each time and for the most part - yes it can be a rangy song and not everybody can actually really sing that song - but if it's in your range, you can tend to do a role like this for a long time and I'm proud and happy to even have the opportunity to have done it for this long. The idea is that when we come in for the first time, we don't have to move much. As you indicated earlier, things like the Disney+ movie make it so that not many people who come to this aren't going to already be familiar with at least the music. Our director and associate director guide us along the way and say, "OK, that works, you can keep that, but this we need to not stray too far from the original mold" and that's kind of how it works. So all I had known about HAMILTON was that it was very successful, but I had never really sat down to listen to it until I got the audition. With any show you do where you have to step into a role that someone else has done and people know it, you can't reinvent the wheel, you have to stick with the guidelines, and you can't change that. When I got cast in this role, which was back in 2018, I basically said to my friends and family that I had won the theatre lottery. So when my agent asked if I wanted to audition for the King, I thought, well, maybe I should listen to it first. So because I had a toddler, I didn't really pay attention to the theater world as much - I was busy with her. Then did the Broadway companies of MAMMA MIA, HAIRSPRAY, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, and CRYBABY - and that was a great time. And now the touring production returns to Greenville's Peace Center for a two-week engagement.