What’s Your Name, Man?
Hamilton, and why I decided to launch this newsletter.
Writing about Hamilton feels like an appropriate way to kick off this newsletter. The musical, which has just been released to the widest audience yet via the Disney+ streaming service, had a profound impact on me when I first heard it back in early 2016.
My friend Jenelle had been raving about it for a while. A feature writer at industry bible Variety, she also works with a theatre company here in Los Angeles and is always ahead of the curve when it comes to stage productions. So she’d been expounding upon its genius for months before I finally cracked, bought the original cast recording, and started to listen. I was transfixed and transported all at once; I can’t claim to be the world’s biggest rap or R&B fan, but musical theatre has always been one of my favourites, and Hamilton is an incredible example of both.
Being British, I wasn’t taught much in the way of American history, but as an Americophile from a young age, I made it my business to learn something of it, expanding that when I moved to the States in 2005. With Hamilton, you don’t need to be intimately acquainted with the life, accomplishments, scandal and sweet rap beats of the first Secretary of the Treasury to appreciate what Lin-Manuel Miranda, his creative collaborators, cast and musicians managed with this show.
The soundtrack became a constant in my life, and, unusually, part of my playlist for writing. Unusual because I don’t tend to listen to music with vocals when I write, as I find it too distracting. Hamilton, however, was different. I became so flooded with the words, the rhythm and the melodies that I was able to have it running even as I wrote. And I didn’t even have to write like I was running out of time, except on the occasional tight deadline.
In late 2017, my girlfriend scored tickets to the LA touring production at the Pantages theatre. I was excited and thrilled, and just as impressed with the production as if I had seen the original Broadway cast at the Richard Rogers. It just made me love the show more, and the soundtrack returned to heavy rotation in my ears while working, walking… any excuse to listen. Even as I risked showing my emotions during Stay Alive (Reprise) or It’s Quiet Uptown. I’m British, and I don’t share such things much in public. Hamilton overrides that.
All of which to say, it’s thrilling to have the show available on my TV whenever I want to watch it (having paid Mickey Mouse his dues). Certainly, a little something is lost by not being present in the room, but so much is gained. Thomas Kail’s direction sweeps around the stage, then closes in when needed to find the perfect emotional reaction on a line. You’ll see more than you ever would, even if you were seated in the front row. Plus, you avoid the potential for a spit bath from Jonathan Groff’s pompous, preening and ultimately perplexed King George, confused as to why his colonial subjects suddenly don’t want to pay his extortionate taxes and treat him like their true love. There are experiences you also don’t get listening to the soundtrack, including Phillipa Soo’s howl of grief and loss as her son Philip dies, and, on the subject of Anthony Ramos, the quiet devastation when Hamilton learns that his friend an and comrade John Laurens has perished in a seemingly pointless skirmish after the war against Britain is already won.
Hamilton blew me away. The first thing in many a year to manage that. Don’t get me wrong, I have liked many things, and one or two truly impressed me (take a bow, Avengers: Endgame), but this show is different. As a person of British birth, it should feel like a direct attack on me, but it never does. It delights me, then it devastates me and I can’t get enough of the witty wordplay that Miranda squeezes into every rhyme and corner. Of course, the show can’t confront everything about the time – no two-hour musical could – but if it encourages people to stumble, awed from the theatre with a burning desire to know more, to poke into the darker corners of the founding fathers’ rise to prominence through revolt and the formation of a new country. Spoiler alert: many of these people are not as fun as Hamilton makes them appear, though they are formidable.
Yet seeing the show in this format also had me thinking of the many people out of work because of the current pandemic situation – theatres are dark and those who bring them to life are struggling to make ends meet. The government in the UK has finally set up a fund to help, but you can still donate to the UK theatrical community at this link, and aid Broadway staff here.
Watching the show reminded me that I also had plans to branch out on my own, writing my own content; yes, mostly about pop culture, movies, TV, with the aim of putting my own views out there. And hopefully providing entertainment myself, through this weekly blog about the subject, some short fiction and the occasional stab at comedy (something I do to keep the writing muscles exercised).
That’s my first proper piece. Thanks for reading. I hope you’ll come back.