Goddamn, Hamilton.
First time I heard about Hamilton
– and I mean, literally the first time the name Alexander Hamilton crossed into
my sphere of knowledge – was a funny bit on the Daily Show in 2009. President
Obama had responded to criticism that he was an elitist by hosting a Spoken
Word and Poetry Slam at the White House, to which Jon Stewart railed against in
a segment called ‘Old Man Stewart Shakes His Fist at the White House Poetry
Slam’. In it, edited clips of the Slam were met with an artfully timed raised
eyebrow and an incredulous ‘You’re rapping about Alexander Hamilton? This is
kinda ridiculous’ from Stewart. I watched, laughed and promptly forgot about
it.
Years later, rumblings across the
sea were occurring. There was a big new thing on Broadway, bigger than Book of
Mormon, the previous Big New Thing on Broadway. The name Lin Manuel Miranda
kept cropping up on Colbert and Conan O’Brien and elsewhere on my Youtube
playlist. Miranda charmingly rapped on How I Met Your Mother. Miranda was on
board for the new Clements and Musker Disney musical. Miranda wrote the song
for The Force Awakens cantina scene. Miranda was a new hotness for Hollywood.
Then the album dropped, and the
world turned upside down. Cast members flooded late night TV and therefore
Youtube. Miranda rapped about Button Quinett on Colbert. He spoke about Puerto
Rico at Congress and then rapped about it on John Oliver. The Grammys and Tonys
and the Pulitzer came and all anyone seemed to talk about was Hamilton.
Come July 2016. In a queue for Cursed
Child tickets (which I got, natch) I thought as I was going to be online for an
extended length of time, I may as well check out this soundtrack that was
blowing us all away.
So I listened. Then, two and a
half hours later, I listened again.
Hillary Clinton had quoted
Hamilton at the DNC. The Hamilton Mixtape with Usher and Busta Rhymes was well
underway. The Clements and Musker Disney film was leaning heavily on Miranda’s
name in its marketing. ‘He never gon’ be President now’ was quoted after every
Trump scandal. It was, not to put to too fine a point on it, effing huge by the time I’d got round to it.
When I find something new I like,
I have a tendency to let it consume my waking days. I went in hard and I’m only just really coming out
of the other side of it. I bought the Ron Chernow book. I saw In The Heights. I
wrote my own version of the opening number about Skara Brae for my class. I’ve
tried (unsuccessfully) to get my nearest and dearest hooked. And tomorrow,
tickets are available for the London show for those who signed up for the queue
before October. There is a real chance that I will see this monster of a show in
the near future and that’s so earth-shatteringly exciting that I had to write
about it.
So there it is. The story of
Hamilton and me. Some say that it’s too anti-British to play here, that it’s
too Americanised and it has undertones of American Exceptionalism that go
unchecked in a way that is uncouth and not to our sensitive British tastes. The
theatre is elitist anyway, right? Who can afford to pay to go to London and see a musical?
All this is, quite frankly, bum. Tickets
are paperless and can only be bought four at a time, so price gouging will not
happen. London is so well connected to the barren wastelands of the North that
anyone from anywhere in the country can get there. And the American Exceptionalism?
Listen to the soundtrack and then we can talk.
Please God someone talk to me
about Hamilton.
