According to popular culture, Musical Theatre does not lend itself to hard-hitting subjects well. However, Warriors, a new musical theatre concept album created by Hamilton’s Lin Manuel Miranda and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Eisa Davis, proves that theatre can uplift oppressed voices and tackle serious topics with ease when a creative team truly cares about its subjects. The album, inspired by the 1979 film of the same name, follows a New York gang called the ‘Warriors’. The Warriors are incorrectly blamed for the assassination of Cyrus, the infamous leader of the ‘Gramercy Riffs’, at a meeting. The Warriors must make their way from the Bronx back to their home of Coney Island, facing off against other gangs and the corrupt New York Police on their way.  

Despite this story being older than Lin Manuel-Miranda himself, Warriors has remained relevant. Gang violence is still a large issue across New York, and the recent Black Lives Matter movement in America has revealed the unacceptable levels of police brutality across the United States, especially towards women of colour. Miranda and Davis have ensured that these issues are the centrepiece of the album, adapting the Warriors themselves from an all-male gang into an all-female one, with the actresses all being women of colour. Davis’ writing expertly captures the powerful nature of sisterhood. Miranda’s lyricism works perfectly alongside it through songs like ‘A Light or Something’, a duet between Warrior Swan (Jasmine Cephas-Jones) and new recruit Mercy (Julia Harriman), as they navigate their romantic feelings for each other.  

The music in Warriors is just as diverse as it’s cast. The album includes huge names in theatre and mainstream music to back up its experimentation, including Nas, Busta Rhymes, and Ms Lauryn Hill. Lin Manuel-Miranda’s willingness to experiment in his musical projects has been obvious since his Tony Award winning shows In the Heights and Hamilton, and it has only become clearer in this new project. From Miranda’s usual rap and RnB numbers to heavy metal and pop punk, the concept album is an exciting explosion of sound that calls back to the diversity of New York City.  

A standout song in the album is ‘Going Down’, a track with heavy metal influences and an incredible vocal performance by Kim Dracula, who plays Luther, the main villain.  However, Miranda’s dip into pop punk through the song ‘Orphan Town’ is an experiment that does not pay off, mostly due to the casting of the titular Orphans. Star of Broadway’s Back to the Future Casey Likes and Pitch Perfect’s Utkarsh Ambudkar sound more like whiny teenagers than rebellious gang members; compared to other gangs who seduce the Warriors with RnB or attack the gang with bombastic club anthems, the Orphans fade into the background.   

Davis and Miranda clearly push the boundaries of what a musical can be with Warriors. With a cast of musicians this stacked, it is almost impossible to predict how this album will be adapted for the stage, if it ever is. Even so, the album itself is an incredible listening experience with an engaging storyline, despite the lack of a visual aid. The album opens and closes with the line “this is the sound of something being born,” a phrase that couldn’t be more relevant for this expert musical adaptation of such an iconic story.  

Photo by Kaleb Nimz on Unsplash