So Hamilton has just finished a three week run at Bass – something we have been actively preparing for and getting excited about for a very long time. During that run I had the opportunity to see the show as a patron and as an usher multiple times, and from that experience wanted to share a few thoughts.
Many of us fell in love with this musical because of the soundtrack and the idea behind it. The amount of effort and work and skill involved in the writing and the quality of the performances of the original cast (plus the amazing producing work from the Roots) made listening to that album a great experience with a ton of great moments. In fact, since this project originally started as something like a mix tape, all of us who have listened to the cast recording experienced this close to the original intention – and it was great.
In fact, how much people fell in love with this musical without seeing it makes what I am about to say even more incredible – the show as a whole is even more incredible than you could imagine. The set design, choreography, lighting, costumes, sound design, and everything else that goes into this show adds onto that already fantastic original score and makes it better. The amount of extra meaning, subtlety, humor, feeling, emotion, and joy that this production is able to convey really is unbelievable. It really does live up to the hype and seeing it in person really is a much different and better experience.
We had the Philip Company, and there were a ton of standouts – Nik Walker as Burr brought a little more sarcastic and menacing quality to the role, almost like he is annoyed he has to try to tell this story to anyone since he is obviously right. The sons of liberty, especially Fergie Philippe, had great interactions, played off each other, and when Fergie and Kyle Scatliffe switch over to Madison and Jefferson they have a great but different camaraderie in great but different characters. Jon Patrick Walker as the King is hilarious, and Erin Clemons so perfectly inhabited the role of Eliza and filled the room with so much emotion that if you got through her performance without crying, I have some questions for you. But it almost doesn’t seem right to call attention to any individual cast members because this show is so much about the ensemble as a whole. Cast members come in and out of focus, being part of the action, commenting on it, or just watching. It is both real and abstract, but still seamless.
I have seen a lot of shows here , and seen a lot of companies. One of the things I have noticed about the best of them is how much time attention and care they take with even the small things, to continually get better. That was true of Wicked – whatever you think about that show, they were doing hours of work with the ensemble about proper articulation and cut offs and more. A show like that doesn’t need to necessarily work quite that hard to make a crap ton of money, but they do.
That is definitely true of Hamilton. I have a unique vantage point to see what some of the tours might be focusing on, and the minute level of detail for the notes they are addressing really shows that this production thinks that no matter how great you are, you can still, as one of the signs around here says, “Do Better.”
So yes, Hamilton-mania is real, it is still selling out everywhere, tickets are still expensive, and all of that. But it really is that good.