AS PROMISED, “HAMILTON,” LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA’S Broadway masterpiece, arrived on Friday, July 3, at 12:01 a.m., available in the homes of anyone who owns a TV or computer screen and is willing to pay $6.99 a month for Disney Plus. And here’s a big shocker — it’s a knockout. (That’s Lin-Manuel Miranda, the show’s creator, sixth from left, in this curtain-call shot. All photos here are frame grabs from the television presentation.)
IN THE BIG OPENING NUMBER, we learn that Hamilton was born in Antigua — “a bastard, son of a whore and a Scotsman.” (His mother, btw, was a French Huguenot.) Young Alexander is orphaned, dreams big dreams and makes his way to Colonial America while still in his teens. After that, things move fast. On the street, Hamilton runs into Aaron Burr (Leslie Odom Jr., left in photo, with Miranda), a Princeton man, introduces himself and goes on and on about his admiration Burr gives him a piece of advice (“Talk less. Smile more.”) and invites him to the neighborhood tavern.
HAMILTON MEETS TWO SCHUYLER SISTERS and marries one of them. That’s Phillipa Soo in blue, playing the future Eliza Schuyler Hamilton. Renée Elise Goldsberry, in pink, portrays her sister Angelica, who meets Hamilton first. But she can’t have him; as the eldest, her “only job is to marry rich.” All the show’s characters agree that they’re very lucky to be living in Manhattan in the 1770s, because it’s “the greatest city in the world.” And “in New York, you can be a new man.”
AS GEORGE III, KING OF ENGLAND, Jonathan Groff is the musical’s recurring comic relief. He wins our hearts with the number “You’ll Be Back,” a whiny message to the rebelling colonists, which contains some of history’s most passive-aggressive lyrics. If they don’t change their minds about this silly war idea, George warns them in song, “I will send an armed battalion to remind you of my love.”
By now, I was singing along. (And yes, I had seen the show on Broadway, with this exact cast.)
After Hamilton’s declaration of ambition, “I’m Not Throwing Away My Shot.” and the production’s most pointed lyric (“Immigrants — they get the job done”), the American Revolution is fought and won.
ACT II BEGINS WITH THOMAS JEFFERSON (the dazzling Daveed Diggs, who spent Act I doing a French accent as the Marquis de Lafayette). Jefferson just got back to the United States — after a few years in Paris, serving as ambassador. This prompts him to dance up a storm and sing “What’d I Miss?” like a man who plans to catch up fast. What did he miss? The whole late ‘80s.
(The dancer at right in the photo, by the way, is not nude. Just an optical illusion. Her costume is inspired by 18th-century women’s lingerie.)
In Act II, all the idealists have become politicians, not soldiers. And politicians tend to be competitive, which brings us to “The Room Where It Happens.” The plot thickens when an entrancing woman in red (Jasmine Cephas Jones, who also plays the third Schuyler sister, Peggy) asks Hamilton for help.. He helps a little too much, maybe because his wife and kids are out of town. Affair. Blackmail. Scandal. Which could only be topped by a fatal duel with Burr (“I’m the damn fool that shot him”), his longtime political rival. Hamilton was in his late 40s. when he died.
OBSERVERS LIKE TO CALL “Hamilton” a rap musical. And it is, up to a point. The arts journalist Sylviane Gold, writing for CNN in 2016, proposed a theory. In addition to Miranda’s wry eye, she wrote, “the nub of the show's originality, and its appeal, is probably Miranda's daring, foundational insight,” that Hamilton and friends were “proto-hip-hoppers … Hamilton's almost obsessive writing was akin to the word-floods of rappers.”
But the show is far from pure rap. There are ballads and love songs and some numbers that aren’t ashamed to be old-fashioned show tunes. The brilliance is in the book, music and lyrics, all written by Miranda. In the choreography by Andy Blankenbuehler. In the direction by Thomas Kail.
Major credit, however, is also due Declan Quinn, the film version’s cinematographer, and Jonah Moran, the editor. There’s nothing static in this adaptation. With purposeful long shots, close-ups, fast cuts and multitudes of camera angles, the cast is always moving. Sometimes the stage and the camera are too.
For a century or so, theater people have wondered and argued about how to film stage performances for maximum impact. Now we know.
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THEATER HISTORY IN A BOX
“Hamilton” — Book, lyrics and music by Lin-Manuel Miranda — Opened at the Public Theater in February 2015 — Transferred to Broadway (Richard Rodgers Theater) in August 2015 — Won 11 Tony Awards, including best musical — Currently on hiatus, as is all of Broadway theater
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