The show, “Hamilton,” arrives with a powerful tailwind. It has already brought in $27.6 million, with just over 200,000 tickets sold in advance — huge numbers for Broadway, and among the biggest pre-opening totals in history. An Off Broadway production of the musical, based on Alexander Hamilton, which ran this year at the Public Theater, was a critical darling that sold out 119 performances, attracted a who’s who of cultural and political figures, and collected a trophy case of awards. And the show’s creator, a 35-year-old New Yorker named Lin-Manuel Miranda, has already won a Tony and a Grammy for an earlier show he had begun while still an undergraduate.

The “Hamilton” back story is compelling: Mr. Miranda, at an airport on his way to a vacation with his wife in Mexico, picked up a copy of “Alexander Hamilton,” a 2004 biography by Ron Chernow. By the second chapter, Mr. Miranda thought the story was made for hip-hop: Hamilton, an orphaned immigrant, plays a key role both in the American Revolution and in the nation’s foundational years, only to stumble with a sex scandal and to die in a duel. Hamilton’s childhood, Mr. Miranda said, made him think of Jay Z’s early days in the Marcy Houses in Brooklyn, and Eminem’s upbringing in Detroit.

Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, among others, are played by black and Latino actors, allowing the creators to comment on America’s fractured present through its past, and vice versa. “Our cast looks like America looks now, and that’s certainly intentional,” said Mr. Miranda, who portrays the title character. “It’s a way of pulling you into the story and allowing you to leave whatever cultural baggage you have about the founding fathers at the door.”

Read the article “Hamilton Heads to Broadway in a Hip-Hop Retelling” on nytimes.com.