HAMILTON COMES TO THE SMALL SCREEN
Hamilton
Dir: Thomas Kail (2hrs 40mins) (12)
★★★★★
The biggest theatre phenomenon of the decade came into being after Lin-Manuel Miranda read Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton, and realised that the first US secretary of the treasury had led a remarkably “hip-hop life” – “from rags to riches via revolution, duels, scandal and tragedy”, said Helen O’Hara in Empire. Now, Miranda’s “hip-hop musical” – a massive hit on both sides of the Atlantic – has been brought to the small screen as a filmed theatre performance, made up of footage of two nights of the original Broadway production, in 2016. The show’s minimalist staging takes some getting used to on film – but it “retains the power to move you to tears”. Miranda plays Hamilton – George Washington’s aide-decamp during the Revolutionary War – as “a brilliantly complex character”, both insecure orphan and arrogant overachiever; and Leslie Odom Jr shines as Aaron Burr, the political rival with whom he fatally came to blows.
The show teems with musical references beyond hip-hop, “from The Pirates of Penzance to Destiny’s Child”, and its verbal dexterity is “astounding”, said Chris Harvey in The Daily Telegraph. As an American origins story performed by a cast made up of black and Latino actors, it has also “never seemed more timely” – although Jonathan Groff’s “camp” George III “nearly waltzes off with the whole thing”. It’s all so fast-paced, I got a bit lost at times and, inevitably, the film lacks the immediacy of a live production, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. But Miranda’s musical is so full of wit and emotion – especially in Phillipa Soo’s “heartbreaking” performance as Hamilton’s wife, Eliza – that it is well worth watching in any form. Available on Disney+.
Lynn + Lucy
Dir: Fyzal Boulifa (1hr 28mins) (TBC)
★★★★
Presented by Ken Loach’s production company, director Fyzal Boulifa’s gripping feature-length debut starts out looking like “old-school social realism”, but develops into something close to psychological horror, said Danny Leigh in the FT. Best friends since school, twentysomethings Lynn (Roxanne Scrimshaw) and Lucy (Nichola Burley) live opposite one another on a housing estate in Essex. Single mother Lynn is “awkward and unworldly”; Lucy – “a local star in a silver puffa jacket” – is more self-assured. When Lucy has a baby too, it looks as though their relationship is going to be rebalanced, but when the child is taken away in an ambulance, suspicion falls first on Lucy’s boyfriend, and then on Lucy herself. And Lynn, with her inside knowledge, suddenly finds herself a celebrity on the estate – and her loyalties divided.
There are echoes of “classical tragedy” in this tale of “tested friendships and public shaming”, said Mark Kermode in The Observer. It’s an “epic parable”, played out in a “pressurecooker environment”, with “more than a whiff of the witch-hunt at the hairdressers, where Lynn has found menial work, and where Lucy endures something like the ancient ritual of being tarred and feathered”. Boulifa has made an “astonishing” film, said Kevin Maher in The Times, featuring an impressive performance from Burley, who made her acting debut in 2005’s Love + Hate, and a “remarkable” one from Scrimshaw, a non-professional hired from street casting (a local newspaper ad). Available
on BFI Player and other platforms.