I only saw Hamilton because my wife wanted to. It was overwhelmingly good.

What is Hamilton?

I was born in a place where it’s not mandatory to teach kids about the imaginary country, America. The first time I heard the word Hamilton was when the cast gave Mike Pence a good post-performance talking to in November 2016. I was still none the wiser.

We saw the show in London this Christmas. By then I knew that Alexander Hamilton was an historical man. And that the show was a hip-hop-rap.

We’ll come back to What is Hamilton? shortly.

What did Hamilton feel like?

More importantly, what did Hamilton not feel like? It did not feel like one of those history documentary voiceovers where a person does the voice of an historical person. Phew.

What it did feel like was an incredibly well-crafted hip-hop album — complete with rap battles! — where the meaning is clear even if a few of the words are not. It engaged from the outset, telling us key details about Alexander Hamilton and the exciting start to his life in ‘America’.

Then a lot of things happened, not all of which I understood. A bit like House of Cards. And like House of Cards, it was compelling beyond reason.

There was action and much revolving. (© 2018 Bart Harris)

Look, honestly a lot of stuff happened that I didn’t understand. Alexander Hamilton wrote some stuff and romantic things happened. And a bit of death. Actually I couldn’t care less about Alexander Hamilton, but…

…I could care intensely about what Hamilton said about humans.

What did Hamilton say about humans?

Hamilton made me feel like humans can achieve anything if they work hard enough. And although that is statistical bullshit — in this fickle universe of capitalist republica — Hamilton reminded me of things like Colin Firth overcoming his stutter in The King’s Speech and Andy Dufresne getting his library in The Shawshank Redemption.

Good?

Yes

Did Hamilton make me cry?

Thank you for that question. Yes it did!

The music and lyrics are exquisite. The raps are tight, fast and preternaturally performed. The sung songs are an excellent example of the very best of musical theatre. Rachelle Ann Go (playing Alex’s wife) in particular has a voice like Whitney. The specific refrain about whether or not things are “enough” made tears stream down my face like Niagara Falls*.

What else happened to my body?

I cried, I learned, and I laughed. What else could a man want?

(Only some dairy-free crisps. The delicious salt & vinegar crisps we bought turned out to contain milk products. As a vegan this made me sad because I had eaten and enjoyed them. I do miss dairy flavours but I don’t miss causing extensive animal misery.)

I finally understood why the ticket prices are so high.

Diversity

At one point I realised that even though the cast was ethnically diverse, it was not genderly diverse. Would it have hurt to make some of the historical men women? No.

Anything else?

Bullet time.

What is Hamilton?

In summary, Hamilton is a delightful, thrilling and poignant expression of creativity.

I’ve seen maybe ten musicals and liked about half of them. Hamilton is second only to Starlight Express. (© 2018 Bart Harris)

Thanks for reading!

*Analogy credit: Scrooged (1988)