FASHION & STYLE

Seen ‘Hamilton’? No? You Poor Thing. 

By JACOB BERNSTEIN
Gay Talese at a matinee of “Hamilton” at the Public Theater. Celebrity audiences have made the show outside the show worth watching, too. Christian Hansen for The New York Times 
At 2:30 p.m. last Saturday, the lobby of the Public Theaterwas bustling. From the crowd of well-dressed people checking their smartphones, a familiar face emerged. It was Frances McDormand, the Oscar-winning actress, in navy slacks and a navy sweater, racing across the room.
The next day at intermission of “Hamilton,” the writer Gay Talese stood in the lobby eyeing the statues — on loan from the New-York Historical Society — of Alexander Hamilton, the founding father on whom the much-heralded hip-hop musical is based, and his archenemy, Aaron Burr. “Spectacular, spectacular,” Mr. Talese said, when asked his impressions.
Over the last four months, the boldface names have come, one after another, to this cozy downtown theater to see the show’s creator and star, Lin-Manuel Miranda, rap and sing and love and cheat and rise and fall and fight and die.
Mr. Miranda’s Twitter feed has become a veritable celebrity lovefest, filled with selfies he has taken with Robert De Niro, Jerry Seinfeld, Anna Wintour, Julia Roberts, Senator Cory Booker, Paul McCartney, Tobey Maguire, Busta Rhymes, Helen Mirren, Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, Michael R. Bloomberg and Jon Bon Jovi.
The celebrity audience members, along with glowing reviews, have turned “Hamilton” tickets into status objects on par with a reservation at the Polo Bar or an early Apple Watch.
“Everybody I know has seen it or is screaming for tickets,” said Joanna Coles, the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, who saw it with the historian Ron Chernow, whose 2004 biography, “Alexander Hamilton,” inspired the musical.
Showgoers in need of security sneak in through a side door as the performance is beginning. That is what happened in March, with the arrival of Bill Clinton; Hillary Rodham Clinton; their daughter, Chelsea; and her husband, Marc Mezvinsky. “I turned around, and there they were,” the veteran AIDS activist Peter Staley said.
A few weeks later, metal detectors were set up in the lobby on the day Michelle Obama saw the show. “I took a picture of her at the curtain call and got yelled at by some 5-year-old Public usher who had been given too much authority and wanted to take my phone away,” said Jessica Jenen, a theater producer known for “Venus in Fur.”
When Madonna saw “Hamilton,” she earned the ire of Mr. Manuel-Miranda because she apparently spent much of the second act texting. “Tonight was the first time I asked stage management NOT to allow a celebrity (who was texting all through Act 2) backstage #noselfieforyou,” he tweeted.
He took down the post soon afterward, but not before it ricocheted around the Internet. A representative for Madonna denied any such behavior occurred. But three people affiliated with the production said she was impossible to miss, lit from below by her phone.
“Hamilton” is not the first show to become a must-see on the celebrity circuit. “The Book of Mormon” drew a sizable contingent early in its run. But because the Newman Theater at the Public holds slightly fewer than 300 people, and because most of the seats are sold for $120 — well below market rate for a show in such demand — the feeding has been particularly frenzied.
A lottery for two seats through an iPhone app called TodayTix has been receiving more than 2,500 submissions a day, said Merritt Baer, a founder of the app. And people associated with the Public are dealing with an avalanche of requests. (The show’s final performance at the Public will be Sunday. It is scheduled to begin Broadway previews July 13 at the 1,319-seat Richard Rodgers Theater.)
“They are definitely coming out of the woodwork,” said Arielle Tepper Madover, the Public’s chairman of the board. She added that she had received ticket requests from people all over the country, including those she has not seen since middle school. There was even a woman she met once at a party some 15 years ago who contacted her via Facebook, asking if she could get tickets for that Friday night. “It’s, like, ‘No,’ ” Ms. Madover said. “That was probably the weirdest.”
A version of this article appears in print on April 30, 2015, on page D5 of the New York edition with the headline: Seen ‘Hamilton’? No? You Poor Thing. . Order Reprints|  Today's Paper|Subscribe