I was fortunate enough to manage to obtain tickets to Hamilton in London (long ago, I signed up to a mailing list that gave me early access to tickets). The original preview period was cancelled as the building works on the theatre were not completed; thus the show I attended was changed to a preview.
Firstly, to avoid chance spoilers, I’d like to make some comments about the theatre itself. It looks beautiful, but the toilets unfortunately show some signs of the rush to complete. Poorly signposted, no hot water and missing the simple details such as a hook on the door to hold the door into the Ladies open during the interval queue – instead everyone having to do the limbo to get in or out of the toilets isn’t exactly ideal – and something that could be fixed in 10 minutes with a little thought.
The ticketless ticketing system worked smoothly – people at the door checked your email against your identification and card; the another person swiped your card to automatically print out your ticket. The unfortunate part of this process is that the resulting ticket isn’t much of a souvenir.
Now that you have decided to read on past the boring bits, onto the parts that could be deemed spoilers. I won’t go into the plot (you can get a pretty good summary of that on Wikipedia), if you aren’t aware of the songs, try this on Spotify.
By coincidence, my ticket was for Dec 18th, 2017; International Migrants Day. There was a definite cheer for the statement “Immigrants, we get the job done!” during Yorktown – but it’s hard to know if that was explicitly in connection or if it is related to other (political) matters.
Now, onto my thoughts about the show. It was slick enough that I wouldn’t have considered it a preview – the full “Opening Show” is tomorrow, so I suppose they should have all the kinks worked out by now. The cast were amazing; my particular favourites were Jason Pennycooke (as LaFayette & Thomas Jefferson) and Michael Jibson as a fabulously camp King George! Pennycooke really handled Guns & Ships (which I was slightly pensive about prior to the show).
Much has been written about the story, music and lyrics (Lin-Manual Miranda has done an amazing job turning this story into a dynamic musical). I don’t think that I could honestly add more to those. I really enjoyed the songs, that at this stage, are really familiar to me.
I want to concentrate on the other part of the production – the staging, costume design and the choreography. The main set looked deceptively simple. About the only thing that changed during the entire show was the position of some stairs that were on wheels; I have to admit that I was slightly distracted by wanting to double check that they remembered to put on the brakes after moving it into the new position. Smaller props, including tables, benches and boxes for standing on were moved on and off the stage by members of the ensemble (and swings). These flowed as part of the show; hat tip to the choreographer(s) for incorporating these transitions smoothly into the show. The complex part of the staging was the rotating turntable stage – not the entire stage, but parts of it. The choreography used this to full advantage and it didn’t feeling like a gimmick; which I thought that it might when I first saw it in action.
One thing that did somewhat surprise me is that how small the cast is!
The costume design team really shone for me. With some of the cast playing multiple named characters, it was really important that the costumes immediately distinguished between multiple characters. The changes of costumes also served to highly the different stages of Hamilton’s life; however this is pretty standard for costume design, so while it impressed me, it didn’t surprise me that much. But how they handled the immediate cues Lafayette/Jefferson; Hercules Mulligan/James Madison; John Laurens/Philip Hamilton and Peggy Schuyler/Maria Reynolds.
I really enjoyed it; it was well worth the trip to London… those who have tickets for a show in the new year, get excited, its great!
To be decided 