It seems that the lead times from ticket purchase to actually going to the event are getting longer and longer. We waited the best part of six months from booking to seeing Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Yesterday, some 13 months after we booked the tickets, we got to see the musical that everyone is talking about! Yes, we finally got to see Hamilton.
Now those of you that know me will probably assume that this is a musical about the life of Stevenage’s best known export, F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton. However, you’d be wrong, this was about the rather lesser known (to me and, one suspects most others) Alexander Hamilton one of the American founding fathers. The musical has had rave reviews on Broadway and I was interested to see just how well it played in front of a UK audience.
The show is written by Lin-Manuel Miranda someone I knew only from his small role in the TV show House. In that he does some rapping and the style and feel was very similar to that used in Hamilton. I’m no great rap fan and I must admit that there were times when I wished that there were subtitles. That said there are other musical styles too such as the appearances by King George III which were probably my favourite bits.
Like every West End musical there was a terrific cast (who knew George Washington was black?), a superb set and I came away having learnt a lot more about the America founding fathers and Hamilton in particular. He didn’t strike me as a particularly likable person and get his comeuppance in the end.
What I found most particular was the audience though who I came to suspect must have been predominantly American. They let out a huge cheer when Washington was introduced and laughed heartily at the jokes about New Jersey which went over my head. But most weird was the cheering after every song as if it was the end of the show, along with the obligatory whooping and a hollerin. I started to wonder just how would they top this at the end? With an instant standing ovation of course! I’m not suggesting that the show wasn’t worth a standing ovation but it all felt a bit contrived to me.
So, to sum up, Hamilton is a superb musical with a great back story and the right balance between humour and history but it needs a better audience!
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