Enjoy its raw, rap energy and the fun factor

HAMILTON, the musical that ricocheted off Broadway and hit the West End three years ago, feels more like a live gig than a stage show, writes the Mail’s theatre critic Patrick MarMion. It’s the kind of act that should be headlining Glastonbury.

Driven by the undoubted excitement of painting U.S. history black, the hip-hop tale of one of America’s Founding Fathers is sensational in more ways than one. If I might venture a rhyme of my own, Alexander Hamilton hits you in the abdomen.

I never had the chance to see it on stage and what surprised me most, watching it on telly, was the sparseness of the set.

There’s not much to occupy the eye or transport the imagination beyond patriotic period costumes in lush red, white and blue. Even the choreography is routine MTV gymnastics: characters illustrate explosions with flailing limbs and breakdance through the War of Independence battle scenes.

The show’s author Lin-Manuel Miranda, in the title role, is more of a karaoke act trying to keep up with his own runaway lyrics.

Phillipa Soo, as his demure wife, reminded my girls of Belle from Beauty And The Beast (so she’ll feel well at home on Disney+).

The show-stealers for me were Jonathan Groff as pouty George III with his camp ‘good riddance!’ numbers and Leslie Odom Jr as Hamilton’s rival Aaron Burr, who, like the Devil, has all the best tunes and dances. Vocally, Hamilton is enormously challenging thanks to the relentless pace, range and rhythm of Miranda’s lines that forever threaten to run out of puff but never quite do. Songs intertwine all the way through. My 16-year-old already knew most of them, thanks to Spotify, and hummed away alongside my hypnotised ten-year-old. Like me, they were slightly flummoxed by the meandering plot. But who cares? Hamilton remains a phenomenon.