Hamilton for all - tomorrow night and beyond

y'all need to watch this.

I don't do cable.

Period.

I like musicals. A great deal. They're my wife's favorite form of theatre. I've been eagerly awaiting Hamilton as I lived in the Midwest and getting tickets wasn't something I was going to do.

I watched the first half hour and turned it off. Massively overhyped. It appears the "hip hop" and "colored people playing Founders" angle really was the only defining shtick. The music was okay but nothing revolutionary or amazing. The lyrical quality was ... meh.

It's in the "Nanette" and the "Black Panther" rubbish pile. Mediocre art that rewards empty virtue signalling.

Queshank

?  What a strange response.

I know Nanette "did okay."  The whole reason I watched it to begin with is because of all the glowing over the moon reviews by leftist journalists at NPR and the NY Times.  "It redefined standup comedy!!!"

That was still early on before I had fully internalized and accepted the collapse of left wing thought when I thought there was still hope for my team.  I watched it twice.  The first time by myself, the second time with my very left wing, pro choice wife whose best friend is a native American lesbian woman to see if I was missing something.  My wife walked away about halfway through so I shut it off.

You'll notice Hamilton has "done ok" without my approval as well.  What an odd point to try to make.

What specifically did you find impressive about Hamilton?  Rather than sharing awards it's won, what was the thing that kept you engrossed if you're not into musicals, don't care for hip hop and don't care about "colored people" playing at being white?  (Those are all things it has won awards and accolades for I'll point out.)

Queshank

Do you think the reviewers drawing attention and heaping praise on this decision are problematic or something?  You'll have to be more specific.

Do you have a problem with the NY Times?

www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/movies/hamilton-review-disney-plus.html

Casting Black and Latino actors as the founding fathers and their allies — Daveed Diggs as Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette, Christopher Jackson as George Washington, and Leslie Odom Jr. as Hamilton’s mortal frenemy Aaron Burr — was much more than a gesture of inclusiveness. (Jonathan Groff channels the essential, irreducible whiteness of King George III.) The show’s argument, woven through songs that brilliantly synthesized hip-hop, show tunes and every flavor of pop, was that American history is an open book. Any of us should be able to write ourselves into it.



FirstPost?

What makes Miranda's version unique is the lens through which it tells history. It is a story of "that America" told by "the America of today." It combines hip-hop with traditional storytelling and visual aesthetic, and also hires Black actors as the founding fathers in a revisionist tale.



Roger Ebert?

www.rogerebert.com/reviews/hamilton-movie-review-2020

Even nicer is how the representation provided by the actors of color forces the viewer to consider what might have happened if people who looked like the performers were actually allowed to take part in crafting the American ideals and the laws of this then-burgeoning nation.

The Atlantic?

www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/07/disney-plus-hamilton-2020/613834/

Miranda had succeeded in making a hip-hop musical about the first secretary of the Treasury feel stunningly dynamic, with talented young actors of color taking on mythic roles such as Hamilton, Washington, and Jefferson.

Variety?

variety.com/2020/film/reviews/hamilton-review-lin-manuel-miranda-disney-plus-1234694098/

Inspired by social progress, financial opportunity and the second term of the United States’ first Black president, Miranda dared to make history relevant and exciting for those who didn’t necessarily identify with Anglo-looking heroes sporting wooden teeth and powdered wigs. Miranda rewrote the country’s origin story, recast its Founding Fathers not as self-serving white supremacists but as idealistic people of color, and remixed the nation’s musical identity — away from the classical influences of Sousa or Sondheim toward a more radical vernacular, that of hip-hop, which resonated with young people and shook up the Broadway paradigm.

Vox?

www.vox.com/21308627/hamilton-movie-review-disney-2020

This is Hamilton, in which the Founding Fathers and Mothers, so long passed into legend for so many of us, are incarnated in Black and brown bodies. It’s a choice that (while presenting issues of its own) is still baldly radical. Hamilton both respects history and confronts it. All of these high-minded promises and big plans for freedom and equality, it says, are supposed to be for everyone. So why has the promise failed over and over again?


Can you get all of that audacity from listening to a disembodied recording? You can get some of it, sure. But watching people perform is different from listening to them sing. Even mediated by a screen, the joyous pulse is palpable. You go to a theater to be in the room where it’s happening, and if you don’t feel any discomfort or thrill, you’re probably doing it wrong.

Rolling Stone?

www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-reviews/hamilton-movie-review-disney-1021867/

In casting black, Hispanic, and Asian-American actors as the Founding Fathers and other dead white people of history, the first-generation Puerto Rican Miranda started a revolution in theater with his tale, inspired by Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography, of America then as told by America now.

I mean seriously.  What a nonsensical response you're making here.  You cannot find a review written about this show that doesn't highlight the "bravery" and "revolutionary" nature of casting minority actors in "white supremacist" roles.  That doesn't highlight the "refreshing" hip hop music choices made.  But we're not allowed to remark on it?

Queshank

No I think "the colored" ought to play any role they want to make a play about.  From Jesus to the Founding Fathers.  To super heroes.

It's just not enough, on its own, for me to think mediocre art is elevated to a higher art form.  Or "revolutionary."  Or all that noteworthy.  For these reviewers this was the spice that elevated this to majestry.

I'll probably give it another shot at some point.  Force myself to stick with it the way I forced myself to watch in morbid fascination at the train wreck that was Nanette.  I'll let you know if it suddenly stops being a chewing gum, flavor of the month effort through some miracle.

If its newfound detractors don't successfully convince DisneyPlus to drop it that is.

Queshank

So, not a Rocky Horror fan.

I believe it is audience participation everywhere

Must bring newspaper and a squirt gun and they usually give out a script for the audience speaking parts