HIP-HOP HOORAY!
Hit musical Hamilton comes to the small screen (...but loses something in translation)
THE hit musical Hamilton rarely gets a mention in the media without the words ‘hit musical’ before it. Since it opened on Broadway in August 2015, it’s been the hottest ticket in every town it has played in, including London, which caused a rather sweet flurry of excitement in the U.S.
The show tells the story of Alexander Hamilton, one of America’s Founding Fathers and a key figure in the drafting of the U.S. Constitution.
Evidently they were quite surprised over there to see it bombarded with theatre awards over here. They seem to have thought we might still be smarting about the whole independence thing.
It’s a good job we’re not still nursing a grudge, nearly 250 years on. If we were, we might perceive an added slight in the timing, on the eve of U.S. Independence Day, of the Disney+ release of the film version — which actually is just the Broadway show with cameras pointed at it.
When I say ‘just’, I don’t mean any disrespect. Hamilton is manifestly a great theatrical production and it must be wonderful to see it on stage.
Most of my friends who have, came away dazzled and delighted, especially by the ingenious lyrics. They come in the form of nonstop hiphop, which, together with a multiethnic cast, gives the story of America past a deliberate blast of America present.
ACOUPLE of my friends even seem to have memorised all the words, which in truth, for those of us who still haven’t saved enough for tickets (good seats for our family of five would leave about enough change from £1,000 for a small tub each of pistachio ice cream), can get tiresome on a long car journey.
But tricorn hats off to the show’s creator, LinManuel Miranda, who also plays the title role in the film. Working ‘monarchy’, ‘anarchy’ and ‘panicky’ into a rhyming hiphop arrangement, while at the same time moving
the narrative along and delivering a useful history lesson, requires a special kind of genius.
What, though, is it like to watch more than two and a half hours of this (with a minutelong intermission) on screen?
Miranda and director Thomas Kail both pop up at the beginning to tell us why they are doing it. ‘We’re all thinking about what it means to be Americans,’ says Kail, which actually we’re all not, but we’ll forgive him for excluding us.
Miranda explains that the idea is to share the show now stage productions have been halted by Covid-19, as if it’s one big gesture of artistic munificence, which actually it isn’t. If it were, Disney would never have got involved.
Frankly, I regret watching Hamilton on screen. If you have no plans ever to see it on stage but want to know what the fuss is all about, then go for it.
But I was still saving up — and now I’m wondering whether to spend the money on something else, such as a small family saloon. Television compacts the spectacle, undermines it, maligns it, fails to refine it.
But it does leave you talking in hiphop rhyme, which may or may not have the ring of a good thing.