2020, d. Thomas Kail - disney+
I am not a frequent theatre goer, but when I have gone it's largely been for either a musical or Shakespeare. Though I prefer cinema to the stage, I don't dislike the experience of live performance (I've seen enough standup and concerts to affirm that certainly). There is a power that it has that makes it such a different experience than the movies, and it's such an experiential mode of storytelling that it should resonate so much more strongly than its celluloid counterparts. But my theatre going experiences, have been a mixed bag, some incredible, most forgettable.
The musicals stand out more. It's obvious why. They're bigger, more lavish, attention-getting productions, plus a catchy tune can go a long way to connecting with the audience, and musicals allow for a little more give performance-wise... a lesser actor can make up for it with stronger singing, and vice versa. But going to theatre - musicals particularly - comes with a greater expense, and effort, and build-up, so the experience needs to live up to that investment. The bigger shows produced obviously need to play to the broadest crowd possible to recoup their own expense, which typically makes for toothless storytelling. Plus musicals are a music genre on their own, and there are trappings to it that engenders a sameness (like so many genres of music can), and if you're not a lover of those trappings, it can be off putting.
Hamilton both embraces those trappings and explodes them. It's a hip-hop musical, a rare feat on its own. Likewise being a musical with a predominantly Black and POC cast seems to be a rarity, certainly one in achieving the heights it has. It's become a touchstone for this generation of musical theatre and a certifiable pop culture phenomenon, certainly in America but well beyond.
Yet, like all theatre, it's heights can only reach so far. Even running to sold out shows on Broadway, in Chicago and London and a few American tours it's still only reaching a fraction of the audience that are interested, curious, or intrigued by it due to proximity, availability or expense. A cast recording has been available for years (I bought a digital copy back in 2017 and didn't really get too far into it, mainly because I couldn't find time to just sit down, listen and focus). A cover album from rap and R&B stars also exists which I have given a whirl or two on Spotify, but these recordings don't quite have the same potency as seeing a live performance.
Which leads us to July 3, and the release of Hamilton on Disney+. Disney paid $75million to acquire the international distribution rights to a 2016 recording featuring it's original Broadway cast (there were some roles played by others when it was working off Broadway as "The Hamilton Mixtape"). Originally slated to debut in cinemas in 2021, Disney convinced creator Lin Manuel Miranda to allow them to release it on Disney Plus during these pandemic times. There are many reasons Disney wanted to do so (foremost being placing high profile content while their new theatrical features are being delayed, thus delayed from releasing on the platform), and likely many reasons why Miranda would agree (as it would likely pull an even wider audience than its theatrical release due to more butts being stuck at home). But there's no way, after the monumental praise (and a few criticisms around historical accuracy) that this "movie", played at home, of a live performance can live up to the hype...can it?
Yeah, it goddamn well can. Hamilton is incredible. It's beyond incredible, it's a masterpiece. It's not flawless, but it's flaws don't influence the overall impact of this incredibly told, amazingly performed story.
First, let's just say that this isn't a stodgy effortless, from-a-distance filming of the musical, it's a very much shot for cinema, with close ups, zooms, pans all very smartly and artfully done to draw the viewer in even more to the performance rather than keeping them at arms length. It wisely offers an experience the theatre cannot, like seeing Jonathan Groff's spitting as he belts out King George III's spiteful tune "You'll Be Back" (the whitest number in the book, borrowing a little from 60's American sugar pop like the Turtles, accurately annoyingly catchy).
The performances are amazing. Daveed Diggs, Leslie Odom Jr. and Renée Elise Goldsberry are a powerhouse trifecta with superstar charisma. We've already been seeing these faces in prominent TV and movies but it's a matter of time before they are massive. Perhaps this D+ showcase will be enough to break them even wider. The rest of the cast is great as well, even the ensemble players who are mostly background dancing (one performer plays "the bullet" for each duel in the show). If there's a weak spot, it's actually Miranda. There's no doubt why he's playing the lead role...the passion he had to write this carries in his performance, but next to every other performer he falls just a little short in the power. He has charisma, but at times his voice just doesn't push it over the edge the way Odom or Goldsberry's performances do. But that would be part of his brilliance, in casting the strongest performers around him, to uplift the overall production, even if it outshines him.
The thing is, the material is so strong, even a weaker, but passionate performance still soars. There are layers, here, starting from the top with casting a historical epic with a POC cast, touching on but also kind of skirting around slavery. There's potency in seeing a Black man portray George Washington, knowing that the first President had slaves. There's a potency in Hamilton's story as an immigrant (albeit a white immigrant) being portrayed and told by the child of immigrants from Puerto Rico.
Despite being a story about the "Founding Fathers" of America, Miranda also doesn't skirt the role women play in the story of these characters. This isn't necessarily a direct or focussed translation of the birth of a nation, instead it's a character study of Alexander Hamilton and his friend/nemesis Aaron Burr during this time. One lyric in "the Schuyler Sisters" (working both mid-80's hip-hop and early 90's R&B together), the first female-led segment of the story, finds them rhyming "I've been reading 'Common Sense' by Thomas Payne/Some men say that I'm intense or I'm insane/You want a revolution, I want a revelation/So listen to my declaration/'We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal"/And when I meet Thomas Jefferson/I'ma compel him to include women in the sequel". It's a very brief but pointed commentary that women got shafted. That much of Angelica and Eliza's role is talking about how their place was to find security and comfort in supporting a man, but the play gives them strength in how they parlay, showing that women carried some weight amidst their mistreatment.
It's an absolutely fantastic character study, certainly showing how times changed, where men were uniquely concerned about their legacy and their impact on the world. Of the 85 essays in the Confederalist Papers defending the new US Constitution, Hamilton wrote 51 of them (when there were originally supposed to be 25 total). That's the fervor of a man trying to leave his mark. "I'm not throwing away my shot", "He will never be satisfied" and "History has its eyes on me" are three of the main refrains of the story which tell the story of both the man, the men and their times.
The music is the part I was most worried about when I heard about a hip-hop musical, a label which is a bit of a misnomer, since it incorporates more than just hip-hop, but that is indeed its foundation. Miranda obviously loves the genre of music, and from a particular period of time as it largely bathes in the early-mid 90's sound of rap and R&B, but it sways back to 80's foundational with allusions to the sounds of Grandmaster Flash, the Sugarhill Gang, Run-DMC, and The Beastie Boys, and stretches forward up to the mid 00's just prior to when the vocorder took dominance for a very painful stretch of time. There's even a couple of simulated rap battles for the debate floor complete with the choir of "oohs" and "ohs". There's nothing about it that's "hard", this isn't gangsta and isn't pretending to be, it very much leans in on the soulful, consciousness hip-hop tip, and if you listened to rap in the 90's you can hear multiple inspirations coming out of each song. On top of that there's the language of Broadway still embedded in it, with tips of the hat to Gershwin and others throughout... Miranda's not forgetting to check where either of his inspirations come from. This may be too much of a bastardization for hip-hop purists, but hey, Busta Rhymes and The Roots (among many others) deeply adore this show.
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