What is the purpose of a review? To temper or
raise expectations? To introduce readers to the themes, characters, and plot
points of a piece beforehand? To show that the reviewer is super smart and that
people should have been nicer to him in high school? Yes, all of these things,
but the preeminent reason is undoubtedly to share whether or not the production
is worth your time and money. Hamilton is one of those things
that is hard to review because, let's face it... you already know if you're
going to watch this or not. Nothing I can possibly say will change your mind
one way or another at this point. You might have already watched it, in fact;
everyone knows Hamilton, and now it is on Disney+. Instead of
wasting everyone's time by adding to the eleven-time Tony Award winner's
mountain of rave reviews I will, therefore, focus on the Disney+ version of the
eminent musical in particular: Simply put, it is a worthy offering that is also
the best possible way to experience the show just short of buying a ticket to
pre-Covid-19 Broadway.
First things first: Hamilton on
Disney+ is a professional filming of the stage production, not an adaptation.
That being said, the camera work is surprisingly dynamic: There are multiple
angles and depths presented, giving the whole experience a slightly more
cinematic feel. If one of the characters has a particularly impressive
reaction, for example, you can bet that you will get a close-up of that
character. This forced focus is useful for someone like me who often gets overwhelmed
with the sheer amount of sensory input that comes with watching musicals in
person.
I would be remiss, however, if I did not mention that like most
musicals, Hamilton is approximately
three hours long. This is somewhat remedied by the fact that you can pause the
play whenever you want to go pee, but it also might make it a chore to sit
through if you watch it with kids (see my nephews Peter and James for an
excellent example). That being said, Disney also does an admirable job of
cutting out an f-bomb here and there to make the experience a more family
friendly PG-13.
Hamilton on Disney+ is, overall, a slightly more complete experience
than the one presented in, say, the official soundtrack. I say
"slightly" here because the music and lyrics really make up the bulk
of the production; as anyone who is lucky enough to have seen the play in
person can tell you, the sets and choreography are purposefully minimalist so
they do not distract from the story. This may come as a bit of a surprise to
anyone who has heard the soundtrack and imagined elaborate setpieces and
complicated dances, but it works. Experiencing Hamilton like
this is really the best way to go until the virus restrictions end and we can
all go on a field trip to New York together. When that happens, I'm
buying.
Well, not really.
This review was
first published in The Keizertimes on July 10th, 2020. Visit at http://keizertimes.com/
Hindsight: Somehow this ended up
with a few typos when I sent it to the editor, which is something I did not
realize until I fed the article back into Word this morning. Hopefully they
fixed it before printing it. I also find the transitions between paragraphs a
bit choppy in this one and the intro a bit long, not to mention silly ("what is the purpose" intros are so cliché and lame). Furthermore, I don’t know if
the “as anyone who is lucky enough to have seen the play in person can tell you”
thing is 100% correct, to be honest, as that’s just what my mom told me. She’s
smart, though, and I trust her.
(Oh yeah, people were actually pretty nice to me in high school too. I just needed a third thing for the list.)
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