Hey, Hamilton came out on Disney+ last week and I’ve got to talk about it.
No, for real, I don’t have a choice.
I haven’t made a Hamilton video yet and this morning I got an email from YouTube asking
if I had died.
It’s a hot topic of discussion as the moment, is what I’m saying.
The show has been a cultural phenomenon for years thanks to its success on Broadway and
in various touring productions, but now that the filmed version featuring the original
cast has been released, and most of us have been able to actually watch it for the first
time, it seems like everybody’s got a take on Hamilton.
And, of course, “everybody” includes me, so here’s my Hamil-take:
Not the reference I was making, though obviously I think he’s delightful.
He’s Luke Skywalker, for Christ’s sake, how am I not gonna love him?
And, come on, that story he tells about being on the plane with Carrie Fisher and Harrison
Ford right after Star Wars first opened, and he sees the crowd of fans waiting for them
at the airport and he turns to them and says, “Guys, I think there’s somebody famous
on this plane”?
Adorable.
Anyway, like most people who have become Hamilton fans, I discovered the show through the original
soundtrack.
I’ve never gotten to see it onstage, so until I watched the Disney+ version last week,
I had never seen Hamilton at all, only listened to it.
But, like most people who have become Hamilton fans, I listened to it repeatedly, incessantly,
for years, until I could sing along to every track without missing a beat or flubbing a
syllable.
That’s unusual for me — at least when it comes to musicals.
There are lots of albums that I’ve gotten to know that well — shit, I could probably
still sing along to most of The Verve Pipe’s discography without butchering the lyrics
too badly.
I was a teenager in the ‘90s, okay?
Who are you to judge me?
But Hamilton is the only soundtrack of a musical I’ve ever memorized.
I don’t really dig musicals, as a rule.
As a cynical, know-it-all, Verve-Pipe-loving teen, I hated musicals!
I’d like to think I’m a lot less uptight and close-minded now, but even today, as an
earnest, self-effacing, Verve-Pipe-loving person of early pre-middle-age, musical theater
is far from my favorite art form.
In fact, other than Hamilton, I don’t really even like any other Broadway musicals, let
alone love them with an obsessive, all-consuming passion.
Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge that while my own assessment of it is overwhelmingly
positive, not everybody agrees.
Since the film of Hamilton was released on Disney+, more critical voices have spoken
out to share their concerns about how the racially diverse casting distracts from the
ways in which the story whitewashes the actual history that inspired it.
Critiques of Hamilton for being ahistorical, for glorifying slaveholders, for neglecting
opportunities to include characters based on actual people of color who lived during
the depicted events, and for all the other ways in which it is problematic are fair and
valid and I am not here to argue against them.
People can hate the show because of those problems, people who love the show can and
should acknowledge those problems.
Being critical is an important part of engaging with art, and need not and should not prevent
us from loving art and allowing it to entertain us, challenge us, move us, and enrich our
lives.
My task as a critic is to try and articulate to the best of my ability what I think and
feel about the art I engage with.
Many people may think and feel differently, for many different reasons, but I happen to
love Hamilton.
What is it about Hamilton that makes me love it so much?
Is it because it’s so popular, and my tastes are so bland and suggestible that I’ll latch
on to anything my culture tells me I’m supposed to like?
Well, yeah.
I mean, no!
No!
Of course not!
Come on.
If that were true, don’t you think I’d have seen at least one episode of This Is
Us?
But, I think Hamilton’s cultural prominence did play a role.
Because it was talked about so much its first year on Broadway, because it won the Pulitzer,
because it was tagged as being not merely good, but important, I was a lot more curious
about it than I would have been about another hot musical that all the theater nerds were
excited about.
It’s kinda funny when I think about it — the importance of Hamilton, its relevance as a
cultural object, opened the door for me, but that’s not what actually made me fall in
love with the show.
If I recall correctly, the sequence of events went something like this: In 2016 I watched
the clip of the cast performing at the Grammys and went “Huh, interesting.”
A few months later, I watched the cast performing at the Tonys and went, “Oh, okay.”
Shortly after that, I noticed the original soundtrack was streaming, so I pushed play
on that, and two and a half hours later I was crying.
I fell in love with Hamilton because it broke my heart.
Yes, the songs are catchy and clever and fun to sing along with, yes the very intentional
racial diversity in the casting enabled a story inspired by the lives of wealthy white
people, many of whom were slave owners, to be about so much more (in my opinion, anyway),
and yes the performers are likable, charismatic, and preposterously talented, but if all those
things, and other aspects of the show I didn’t mention just now, didn’t combine to make
me feel something, I doubt I’d have found Hamilton worth standing here talking about.
Breaking my heart is a surefire way for a story to wind up high on my favorite list.
My favorite novel, The Great Gatsby, has all sorts of things going for it — Fitzgerald’s
gorgeous prose, its critiques of the excesses of the Jazz Age and the American myth of upward
mobility — but the reason it’s my favorite is because Gatsby’s tragic, doomed attempt
to recapture his past hits me right where I live.
It makes me feel something.
When I reflect on some of my favorite films, many — not all, certainly, but many — share
themes of tragedy, loss, grief, longing, characters forced to confront no-win situations, characters
struggling and often failing to atone for past sins or live with regrets: City Lights,
Ikiru, All Quiet on the Western Front, Casablanca, Sunset Blvd, Out of the Past, the list goes
on and on and on.
Hamilton is like those.
It hits me the same way, in the same places.
It lingers.
It stirs up my own regrets, my own mistakes.
When Angelica sings about romanticizing what might have been, I feel like I know exactly
what she’s talking about.
When Burr pulls the trigger, knows immediately it was the wrong thing to do, but also knows
there’s no way to change it, knows that he’ll have to live with that choice for
the rest of his life . . . I think I know how that feels, too.
My own experiences aren’t nearly so epic or so consequential — I doubt they’re
of much interest to anyone but me — but that’s not the point.
Hamilton compels me to make these connections, to tie myself to its characters through these
things we share, because that’s what great art does.
That’s why it resonates.
And, now that I’ve seen Hamilton on Disney+, I can tell you that watching it resonates
in the same places as listening to it.
There are some interesting differences, which I’ll get into in a minute, but the emotional
experiences of watching the show and listening to the soundtrack are very much the same.
I get choked up during the same songs — “Satisfied,” “Burn,” “It’s Quiet Uptown,” “Who
Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story”.
I relate to the same characters — Angelica, Burr.
I admire George Washington just the same.
I get the same kick out of seeing Thomas Jefferson cast as the flamboyant villain.
It’s a great show to see and to hear.
But, obviously now that I’ve actually gotten to see it, I realize how much I’ve been
missing just listening to the soundtrack.
I thought Jonathan Groff was great as King George already, but after watching his performance?
Goddamn.
That guy’s a genius, right?
He barely even moves for most of his first number.
And the way he fires off those “da-da-da-dada”s like bullets from a semi-automatic firearm
that hadn’t been invented yet?
Ugh!
How fantastic is that dude?
There’s also Renee Elise Goldsberry’s facial expressions and body language as she
tries to evade Burr in “The Schuyler Sisters,” and gazes regretfully across the stage at
Alexander and Eliza in “Satisfied”; Christopher Jackson’s commanding stage presence as Washington;
the loose yet perfectly timed interplay between Lin-Manuel Miranda, Anthony Ramos, Daveed
Diggs, and Okieriete Onaodowan in their scenes together as Hamilton, John Laurens, Lafayette,
and Hercules Mulligan; the layers upon layers of choreography that carry so much meaning
and add such depth to the story; and the moments of exquisite simplicity and stillness, like
Leslie Odom Jr. as Burr, standing alone, commanding the stage as he sings “Wait For It”.
I want to go back to that loose interplay between Hamilton and his buddies in Act One,
because that’s something that is present throughout the show.
There’s a looseness, a relaxed confidence, a naturalism to all of the performances in
the Disney+ film that I didn’t expect having only previously listened to the soundtrack.
It’s not that the performances on the soundtrack are stiff, but they’re very precise, and
more theatrical than those in the film.
Some of that is due, no doubt, to the differences in format and the processes involved in creating
the soundtrack as opposed to the film.
The soundtrack was recorded in a booth, in a studio, with the lyrics on a rack in front
of the performers, whereas the film is a recording of an actual onstage performance of the show,
in the theater, in front of an audience, with everyone in costume and in the moment.
Plus, since the soundtrack is audio-only, there are certain beats that are hit a bit
stronger to ensure that they come across to the listener, and that has an effect on performance,
as well.
But there are other differences between the soundtrack and the film that I don’t think
are due, or at least not entirely due, to those factors.
They’re differences that, I think, are the result of the natural evolution of the performances,
and of the relationships of the actors to their characters and the story.
The original soundtrack was recorded in August 2015; the film was shot ten months later in
June 2016.
It’s fascinating to see how the performances changed and deepened, sometimes in very subtle
ways, during that ten month interval.
I’ll give you one example.
In the show’s second song, “Aaron Burr, Sir,” there’s a funny bit near the beginning
where Miranda as Hamilton tells Burr, who he’s just met for the first time, that he
punched the bursar at Princeton.
He then goes on to explain why, and on the original soundtrack is goes something like
this: “I wanted to do what you did, graduate in two and join the revolution / He looked
at me like I was stupid / I’m not stupid.”
In the film, he performs the exact same line, but more like this: “He looked at me like
I was stupid / I’m not stupid.”
I’m no Lin-Manuel Miranda, but hopefully you get the idea.
And if you listen to the soundtrack and watch the film, you’ll be able to see the difference
even more clearly than through my amateur demonstration.
The first time, on the soundtrack, Miranda reads the line a little cocky, a little pushy,
and also a bit jokey.
But in the film, his delivery is very different.
He’s more earnest, more vulnerable, almost pleading to be acknowledged and validated,
but also fiercely determined to prove himself.
That combination of vulnerability and determination is a defining quality of Miranda’s portrayal
of Hamilton in the film.
It’s not that it isn’t there on the soundtrack — it definitely is, and is at the core of
the character as written — but in the film, we can see how it has come to the forefront
of the performance.
You can also see the difference when you compare the soundtrack and film versions of Hamilton’s
first meeting with Washington.
On the soundtrack, Miranda plays him as awestruck, eager to please; in the film, he’s clipped,
composed, with a little bit of a chip on his shoulder.
Because he’s the lead character, and because he’s such an emotionally open performer,
the changes in Miranda’s performance as Hamilton are the easiest to spot.
But there are interesting alterations in the performances of the other leads, as well.
In the film, Leslie Odom Jr. throws himself into Burr’s scenes of campaigning and self-promotion
with an unselfconscious relish that doesn’t always come across on the soundtrack; and
Phillipa Soo brings more strength and shrewdness to Eliza to balance out the warmth and generosity
of spirit that define her on the soundtrack.
One of the unique charms of live theater is that each performance of a show is unique,
and usually ephemeral.
Hamilton doesn’t change on the page — or at least, it hasn’t significantly since
it opened on Broadway — but every time the cast takes the stage, they create the show
anew, and that show, that night, belongs to that audience alone.
Because I’m more of a movie person, I tend to think of acting in the singular: F. Murray
Abraham played Salieri in Amadeus, Viola Davis played Mrs. Miller in Doubt, those performances
were captured in those films and now they are finished and locked and will exist forever
in that form.
But on stage, Salieri, Mrs. Miller, and every other character in every other show, has been
played many times, and in the more successful shows, by many different actors, and each
performance is something new.
The playing of the character isn’t a one-time thing, it’s a continuous process, an ongoing
act that is repeated and refined night after night.
Theater people know this already.
Now, thanks to the Hamilton film on Disney+, and the original soundtrack which we can compare
it to, people like me, who haven’t been super into theater, can also get a sense of
how, when you’re onstage, every action really is an act of creation.
The soundtrack and the film are both Hamilton, just as every single unique performance on
stages around the world over the last five years has been.
Hamilton isn’t one thing, because it isn’t a static object, it’s an act, it’s a work.
Like all truly great works of art, it’s something to be created and recreated, reinterpreted
and reevaluated, experienced and re-experienced, always familiar, always brand new.
Pretty sure “Satisfied” is gonna wreck me every time, though.