With the mega-hit musical Hamilton due on television in a few days, I thought it a good time to rerun my review of three years ago. This is not part of the series of made-for-TV reproductions of classic shows – one of the best of which, Grease, was helmed by Hamilton’s own director Thomas Kail – but the actual stage version of the musical filmed with multiple cameras in live performance way back when with the original cast. We’ll see if Disney got its $75 million worth (that figure is not a typo), especially given what would seem to be limited international interest in the subject – I’d hate to be the person writing the Japanese subtitles. But the stage show has reportedly passed $1 billion in global revenues, including $650 million from New York alone, and spawned by far the best-selling Broadway cast album in history. With a usurious official ticket price on Broadway of up to $1,150 (also not a typo – don’t even ask about scalper prices), the audiences for the show have inevitably been less diverse than the famously racially mixed cast. As such, the television production will truly bring this to a new viewership. Hopefully it will lure a wider fan base to live theater once the nation’s stages reopen.
I’m still wary of the show’s version of history. Wait until the mobs find out that Hamilton, presented here as an ambitious Latin immigrant, was actually a 100% white guy (three-quarters British, one-quarter French) who espoused virulent anti-immigrant views and, in going to New York from the Caribbean, was simply moving from one British colony to another. Here’s my review.
sekenbanashi 