"How does a young buck reindeer, one who was constantly mocked and dropped in the middle of a forgotten island full of misfit toys where nobody could tell you what his name is, grow up to be the one who’s the most famous?"
That’s a question that Lin-Manuel Miranda didn’t think to ask when he was composing a musical about the guy on the 10-dollar bill. Not to worry, though — the good folks in Eclipse 6, a Utah-based a capella group with seven albums to their name, have taken Miranda’s “Hamilton” music, mashed it up with a Gene Autry classic, taken several detours into a beloved stop-motion Rankin/Bass animated Christmas special, and produced a fresh new take on the tale of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, google “Hamildolph.” You’ll thank me later.
In a phone interview, Eclipse 6 member Shayne Taylor explained that the Hamilton/Rudolph mashup is consistent with the group’s history of giving popular musicals a new Christmas twist.
“When we were first starting, we arranged a version of ‘Boom! Shake the Room’ by Will Smith. So then one Christmas, we came up with the idea to rewrite the lyrics as Christmas lyrics,” he said. “I drew on the '‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’ poem, and people seemed to get a real kick out of it. So that idea has kind of grown over the years.”
Taylor and his wife, Rachel, have revamped a number of tunes for the Eclipse 6 Christmas concerts. One year, they did a medley of rap songs from the '80s and '90s and made them Christmasy, and for the past seven seasons, they’ve created mashups of the top songs of the year with an added Christmas twist. In 2015, they performed a Yuletide version of “Uptown Funk,” which was especially well-received, so for this year, Taylor knew he would have to come up with something spectacular to top that one.
“The reason why ‘Hamildolph’ came about is because I was thinking, ‘What’s the biggest, most viral idea that people are into?’” Taylor said. “‘Hamilton’ maybe doesn’t have as wide a spread as some of those other songs did, but the people who know about it are diehards. They’re obsessed with ‘Hamilton.’ It’s a different level of liking something. And so I knew if we threw in a ‘Hamilton’ song, it would go over really well, especially with ‘Hamilton’ fans.”
Taylor was struck by the similarities between the Rudolph story and the “Hamilton” song “Right Hand Man,” which recounts the story of George Washington bringing on Alexander Hamilton as his aide de camp.
“It’s a pretty striking parallel between the story of George Washington calling up Hamilton to be his right-hand man when he was nobody at the time to Santa Claus bringing on Rudolph out of nowhere,” he noted. “That was the concept that kind of got it rolling.”
Taylor created a demo for the rest of the group in October, and they loved it.
“Even the guys who didn’t know the show that well thought it was really funny,” he said.
They made plans to record a video, which, as of this writing, has over 233,000 views on YouTube.
“We feel like everyone’s enjoying it,” Taylor said. “All of our kids have it memorized, even though they have no idea what ‘Hamilton’ is. But people who are ‘Hamilton’ fans really geek out over the parallelisms.”
If you want to see “Hamildolph” performed live, check out one of Eclipse 6’s Christmas concerts this weekend at the Grand Theatre in Salt Lake City. They just added an extra performance on Dec. 13. Tickets to “Hamildolph” are easier to get and less expensive than tickets to “Hamilton,” and the show may well be just as much fun.
'Hamildolph' by Eclipse 6
Utah-based a cappella group Eclipse 6 has combined the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with the Broadway smash "Hamilton," and the delightful result is becoming a viral sensation.
Jim Bennett is a recovering actor, theater producer and politico, and he writes about pop culture and politics at his blog, stallioncornell.com.