Hamilton Review

Hey Everyone!! :-)

Today, I wanted to share my review of Hamilton with you. Enjoy!! :-)

Hamilton Review:
Okay, first of all, I need to say this: Hamilton is not so much a musical play as it is a modern interpretation of opera. It's presented entirely in song. Though, unlike most traditional operas, it's in English. Which is a bonus for me, since that's the only language I understand. Anyway, I just needed to get that off my chest. Definitions are important. 😉

I also want to note that there are some historical inaccuracies in the show. Apart from the obvious -- I rather doubt addresses to Congress were made in song and, if they were, it would have most likely have been a style of music other than R&B -- there is some smudging and fudging here and there. But those aspects don't really affect the story much since, as I'll get into later, it's much more a story about people than it is about historical events.

Now that that's out of the way, I thought the gestalt effect of this interpretation of our history was nothing short of brilliant. The talent that went into creating it is breathtaking. Everyone involved, from the writers to the choreographers to the orchestra to the actors, was incredible. And the way that the story was told and simultaneously subtly criticized was both entertaining and clever.

To the details. The story covers several decades of an event-filled period of American history. It's a time that's well worth reading about. If you thought House of Cards was good, you ain't seen nothing until you've read about the real political intrigue that happened throughout history. And this period in American history was full of exciting events and machinations, both political and martial.

Hamilton does demonstrate this in a vague sort of way, but the focus is on the characters, not the events. George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr, and of course, the title character, Alexander Hamilton. Those titans among men, the founders of our nation, whose names we learned as a mantra, in grade school, but somehow never got around to talking about as people.

And they were people, make no mistake, not gods. Not infallible, either, as the story makes plain. Not above the petty vanities, jealousies, and selfishness that plague all of humankind. Not immune to mistakes, self-centered impulses, or ill-considered choices. In our history they may be giants, but in their lives they were only men. What's more, they knew it. That's why the government they created is so amendable. They knew they might not get it right the first time, and they knew that things change over time. But I digress since that's not the focus of the story.

As I said, this story focused on who these men were. How they thought, what they valued, how their perspectives were shaped, and how those perspectives colored their contributions to what we now know as the United States of America. And, overall, I think Hamilton does a really good job of that.

As an author, one thing I haven't done, yet, is try to give life to a character who was an actual person, and about whom so much is written and who wrote so much themselves. How do you mesh the historical figure with the person's own writings in a way to try to create as authentic an image of the person as possible? I'm not sure, and maybe that's why I haven't done it. But the writers in Hamilton did, and I think they did a good job.

Keep in mind, there's a lot of material written both about and by the men who are the focus of this story. Histories both contemporary and later, biographies, personal letters, political documents, essays, etc. Writings by the men. Writings by their peers. Writings by their enemies. Writings by historians with agendas and biases of their own. How do you sift through all that to figure out who they were in reality?

Honestly, I'm not sure it's entirely possible. I mean, take for example a person's own writing. Maybe you'd think that would be the best source of truth regarding who that person was. But I can tell you from my own writing, what and how I write depends largely on a great number of variables. My mood, the context in which I'm writing, the subject I'm addressing, who my intended audience is, hell, even whether I'm hungry or thirsty or feeling sick, or not. And, like all people, my perspective evolves over time.

So how could someone several hundred years from now, untangle all that to figure out who I am as a person? Especially, when you add in the filter of culture and shifting social norms and mores. It's no different from trying to recreate a person's life from a series of unconnected, slightly out of focus, photographs when you can't even tell where they are in the pictures.

As you might be able to tell, I've given this a bit of thought. I've read some of what the founding fathers wrote, and it's interesting reading. But this isn't the first time I've found myself wondering who they really were, what they were really like. Their different personalities, personal codes, and areas of focus come through pretty clearly in their writing, but they weren't two-dimensional characters. They were people. And people are messy, complicated, and sometimes irrational.

Hamilton, as I said, did a pretty good job of showing that multifaceted aspect of the men we've been taught to revere. It shows both their noble aspirations and where and how they fell far short of achieving them. It shows their foibles and their flaws, as well as their achievements and successes. It showed the principles they tried to live their lives by, and how they sometimes betrayed their own values. It even shows how some of them regarded principles as far more malleable concepts than others, and how those differences in thought and perspective affected their relationships with each other.

It humanizes them in a way that I don't think I've seen done quite that well before. And, though it's impossible to know for sure, while it likely gets many of the details wrong, I think it captures each man's overall character and personality fairly accurately. At least, I can see the characters in Hamilton fitting what I've read about the men the characters are based on.

The overall message of Hamilton, or at least what I perceive it to be, is that all of human achievement has been made by people. Just people. Governments are just people. Even wars are just people. People with hopes, dreams, aspirations, plans. People with families, fears, and flaws. People whose own histories and experiences color their judgments and their reactions. All just people. And even the greatest achievements are made just by people.

So, that's my takeaway from it. I think it's a good and timely reminder. I really only have one criticism, and it's that I don't think enough emphasis was put on showing what a moral failure it was to allow slavery to exist in what was supposed to be a free nation. That's something I think should have been given more attention. Though, to be fair, I haven't read the book the opera is based on, so it might have been given more of a focus there. And, on a slightly less serious note, I also am now of the opinion that we should resurrect the practice of solving political disputes with duels. Just think Trump and Biden with pistols at dawn. Hell, let's go with tradition and pick a place in New Jersey for the event. Whatever the outcome, the country would be better for it, right? 😉

Peace!