Without saying exactly where I live, let’s say that New York City isn’t all that far away. And yet, I have yet to see a Broadway show. There are a lot of reasons for that I won’t get into right now. But, a number of people I know go rather frequently to see all kinds of shows and they all agree on the same thing: Hamilton is awesome. Now, I could have gone out and listened to the soundtrack, but I decided to see the show first. And that…is a lot trickier when you consider how quickly that show sells out every time it sets up more dates.
Well, fortunately (especially with Broadway closed for the foreseeable future), Disney+ opted to put a filmed version of Hamilton as performed by the original cast onto its service for streaming. So, it looks like I finally get to see what the fuss is all about and see if Hamilton is worth the extreme amount of hype my theater-going friends have been claiming it is.
OK, here’s where I need to pause for a minute.
I have no idea how to write a review for a taped version of a Broadway show. Was the music good? Yeah. Everyone sang well, the story moved, and there was a lot of clever ways to depict historic events featuring a cast that looked and moved nothing like the people they were portraying–and that, quite frankly, is rather cool all by itself. We mythologize the Founding Fathers enough in this country as it is. And if there’s a Founder who needs a bit more attention than others, Alexander Hamilton fits the bill.
But I have never been one much for most cinematic musicals. I do enjoy them in the rare instances when I see them live, but on film? Not so much. As such, a part of me was thinking the entire time Lin-Manuel Miranda and his cast were performing that I would still rather to (eventually) see it live. What I saw, I liked, but I kept reflecting that it would have been better in the theater.
Now, I’m not going to turn into an LMM superfan anytime soon. He’s talented, I like what I saw, but this by itself isn’t enough for him to become my theatrical be-all and end-all. True, setting up Washington’s cabinet meetings like rap battles between Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson was rather brilliant, and the way Aaron Burr’s story was threaded through Hamilton’s was well-done. I think I’ll need to see this live at some point to make a more final judgement. Even as this production was clearly planned out to make the show simultaneously both theatrical and cinematic at the same time, it was still a taped performance, and it’s not quite as good as the real thing, and this was still quite good.
Grade: A
0 Comments