The father of all musicals
HAMILTON ★★★★★ (Cert 12, 160mins. Streaming now on Disney+)
WITH tickets going for hundreds of pounds, not many of us were able to see the West End production of Hamilton. But now, for the price of a Disney+ subscription, you can settle into a front-row seat at the hottest musical of the century.
Director Thomas Kail captured the original Broadway cast over three nights before they made their final bows in 2016.
Actor, composer and lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda leads an experienced and diverse cast to tell the story of Alexander Hamilton, one of the so-called Founding Fathers of America.
With virtually no dialogue and a sparse two-deck stage, Miranda lets his show tunes do the talking, using a fusion of different styles including rap, hip hop, R&B, jazz, blues and classic Broadway.
The music never stops but there isn’t a single filler. My Shot,
Yorktown and The Room Where It Happened are already classics.
Not many show tunes have lyrics as playful as Miranda’s but I suspect it was the initial casting that made the show a sensation.
The charismatic writer was always going to take the lead role but it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Daveed Diggs in the dual roles of Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson. And Leslie Odom Jr is pitch perfect as Hamilton’s jealous friend and the play’s narrator Aaron Burr.
Of course, not all of these revolutionaries are household names in the UK.
Miranda wrote his Pulitzer prize-winning play for audiences in America where these figures have the status of mythical heroes and their actions are drilled into children from an early age.
But when characters rap about key events involving taxes, debts and federal control, you can hit pause and visitWikipedia.
Kail’s main goal was to capture the experience of sitting in the priciest seat in New York’s Rodgers Theatre. But he also
strives to offer something more cinematic. Occasional aerial shots allow us to appreciate the choreography.
Cleverly, Kail also shot some close-ups when the audience wasn’t present.This makes the drama much more emotionally involving than a standard filmed performance.At times, the over-expressive Miranda still seems to be performing to the back row.
But this is a minor quibble. For fans of musical theatre, this is a revolutionary night in.