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Post by Michael on Mar 12, 2016 2:29:42 GMT
I saw it before the cast recording came out. The thing that's so amazing about Hamilton is that there's all this hype about it and yet it actually lives up to it. I really like The Book of Mormon but I don't think it lived up to its hype. You shouldn't judge the music of Hamilton from the Grammys alone. They chose that number to perform because it sets everything up and explains, it doesn't need to be put into context, but it's actually one of the weakest songs in the show. I like the score for In the Heights, but Hamilton's is much better and more accomplished. It also sounds different. There is much more rap in Hamilton and rather than the salsa/latin music of In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda has incorporated the rap with R&B. He also wrote the book for Hamilton. He didn't for In the Heights and most people will state that the weakest part of ITH is the book. I agree that on paper the show sounds boring/weird. I don't think most people that are clamouring to get tickets were necessarily interested in Alexander Hamilton before they knew the show. But that's what makes it genius, LMM has made it interesting, he's made it fun, he's made it accessible. Not for one moment watching that show was I uninterested or bored. Yes there are a few people on BWW that don't like Hamilton, but you have to put that into comparison to the thousands upon thousands that love it. It's impossible to write something that everyone likes, but this one comes pretty close. I will say one thing though. This show, nor any other, is worth queuing up overnight for the chance to get a ticket. It's far, far better to wait until the next batch go on sale, buy one at normal price and wait patiently. I've done it twice now and I am looking forward to my next time seeing the show in Summer. After just sitting through the first act, the show is for me everything you said but in reverse. I even considered leaving at the interval, but as the money is spent anyway, I can also watch the second act but I doubt it'll get any better. The only parts I sort of enjoyed so far were the opening number and the King George segments. That said: judging by the audience reactions, I seem to be pretty much alone with my opinion though, as everybody else loves it.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2016 3:55:21 GMT
I saw it before the cast recording came out. The thing that's so amazing about Hamilton is that there's all this hype about it and yet it actually lives up to it. I really like The Book of Mormon but I don't think it lived up to its hype. You shouldn't judge the music of Hamilton from the Grammys alone. They chose that number to perform because it sets everything up and explains, it doesn't need to be put into context, but it's actually one of the weakest songs in the show. I like the score for In the Heights, but Hamilton's is much better and more accomplished. It also sounds different. There is much more rap in Hamilton and rather than the salsa/latin music of In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda has incorporated the rap with R&B. He also wrote the book for Hamilton. He didn't for In the Heights and most people will state that the weakest part of ITH is the book. I agree that on paper the show sounds boring/weird. I don't think most people that are clamouring to get tickets were necessarily interested in Alexander Hamilton before they knew the show. But that's what makes it genius, LMM has made it interesting, he's made it fun, he's made it accessible. Not for one moment watching that show was I uninterested or bored. Yes there are a few people on BWW that don't like Hamilton, but you have to put that into comparison to the thousands upon thousands that love it. It's impossible to write something that everyone likes, but this one comes pretty close. I will say one thing though. This show, nor any other, is worth queuing up overnight for the chance to get a ticket. It's far, far better to wait until the next batch go on sale, buy one at normal price and wait patiently. I've done it twice now and I am looking forward to my next time seeing the show in Summer. After just sitting through the first act, the show is for me everything you said but in reverse. I even considered leaving at the interval, but as the money is spent anyway, I can also watch the second act but I doubt it'll get any better. The only parts I sort of enjoyed so far were the opening number and the King George segments. That said: judging by the audience reactions, I seem to be pretty much alone with my opinion though, as everybody else loves it. Well, what a shame! But yes as I said, nothing can be liked by everyone. The parts you mentioned are the ones I probably like the least haha.
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Post by 49thand8th on Mar 12, 2016 4:42:07 GMT
Just picked up my ticket for tonight. It's 2.30pm local time and the cancellation line is already 14 people long. The guys in the tents are professional line sitters and camp overnight at most of the days - people are paying them for a chance for a returned ticket. That's crazy. Update: 6.30pm, and there are now more than 40 people in the cancellation line; the tents are now gone. Are there really that many returns? I for one would only queue up if I were the fifth person in line at most. And definitely not longer than for 2h... From what I understand, a lot of the tickets that become available in cancellation are people who won lotto but can't make it.
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Post by ali973 on Mar 12, 2016 9:34:40 GMT
I saw it before the cast recording came out. The thing that's so amazing about Hamilton is that there's all this hype about it and yet it actually lives up to it. I really like The Book of Mormon but I don't think it lived up to its hype. You shouldn't judge the music of Hamilton from the Grammys alone. They chose that number to perform because it sets everything up and explains, it doesn't need to be put into context, but it's actually one of the weakest songs in the show. I like the score for In the Heights, but Hamilton's is much better and more accomplished. It also sounds different. There is much more rap in Hamilton and rather than the salsa/latin music of In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda has incorporated the rap with R&B. He also wrote the book for Hamilton. He didn't for In the Heights and most people will state that the weakest part of ITH is the book. I agree that on paper the show sounds boring/weird. I don't think most people that are clamouring to get tickets were necessarily interested in Alexander Hamilton before they knew the show. But that's what makes it genius, LMM has made it interesting, he's made it fun, he's made it accessible. Not for one moment watching that show was I uninterested or bored. Yes there are a few people on BWW that don't like Hamilton, but you have to put that into comparison to the thousands upon thousands that love it. It's impossible to write something that everyone likes, but this one comes pretty close. I will say one thing though. This show, nor any other, is worth queuing up overnight for the chance to get a ticket. It's far, far better to wait until the next batch go on sale, buy one at normal price and wait patiently. I've done it twice now and I am looking forward to my next time seeing the show in Summer. After just sitting through the first act, the show is for me everything you said but in reverse. I even considered leaving at the interval, but as the money is spent anyway, I can also watch the second act but I doubt it'll get any better. The only parts I sort of enjoyed so far were the opening number and the King George segments. That said: judging by the audience reactions, I seem to be pretty much alone with my opinion though, as everybody else loves it. I'm not saying this in a condescending or patronizing way at all, but given that you are a huge fan of Memphis, it does not surprise me one bit that you did not like Hamilton.
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Post by talkstageytome on Mar 12, 2016 10:17:46 GMT
I am a big fan of both Memphis and Hamilton. What's the relationship between the two of them? I'm assuming the fact that the music styles are so different.. but then, are there many shows that have the same rap sound as Hamilton?
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Post by ali973 on Mar 12, 2016 10:48:49 GMT
It wasn't a blanket statement, actually. I'm glad you can enjoy both Hamilton and Memphis separately (as one should), since there's very little room of comparison and overlap between the shows.
I had a hunch that Michael wouldn't like it, having noticed a trend in the type of shows he likes. Again, not meant in a patronizing way at all. I happen to like Wicked. Just an observation now that I can match what shows some of the members are really into.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2016 12:04:38 GMT
The one real problem Hamilton has in my opinion is that there's so much of it. Difficult to take in at a single sitting, I enjoyed it far more my second time after I got to know the cast recording better.
Also maybe be careful not to judge the show on just the cast recording? The lighting and choreography in particular are absolutely tremendous, and although the show is almost entirely sung through so the cast recording does give you a solid knowledge of the music, lyrics, and story, there's SO MUCH MORE going on. Which I know is true for every show, but the completeness of the cast recording and brilliance of the visuals could make it a little bit easier and a little more unfair to forget for this particular show.
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Post by 49thand8th on Mar 12, 2016 20:01:05 GMT
I was surprised how much more I liked it the second time as well, even though I think at that point I'd only listened to the cast recording twice through (I still don't own it; I was listening on NPR). I don't feel a need to go back unless an actor I'm a huge fan of gets cast in it here or on tour, though.
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Post by talkstageytome on Mar 12, 2016 21:26:36 GMT
It wasn't a blanket statement, actually. I'm glad you can enjoy both Hamilton and Memphis separately (as one should), since there's very little room of comparison and overlap between the shows. I had a hunch that Michael wouldn't like it, having noticed a trend in the type of shows he likes. Again, not meant in a patronizing way at all. I happen to like Wicked. Just an observation now that I can match what shows some of the members are really into. Ahh I see. Looking back my question may have come off a bit abrupt but I didn't intend it too. I thought I was missing something. All this talk of Hamilton is making me more and more eager for it to come over. Friend of a friend said she knew someone auditioning for Angelica in the summer but I have no idea if this is just hearsay, or completely made up, or actually based on truth, but if it is true then that's exciting. I just want some solid proof of the transfer!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2016 21:31:07 GMT
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Post by Michael on Mar 12, 2016 23:06:04 GMT
I had a hunch that Michael wouldn't like it, having noticed a trend in the type of shows he likes. Again, not meant in a patronizing way at all. I happen to like Wicked. Just an observation now that I can match what shows some of the members are really into. No offence taken - I fully understand what you mean and have a similar theory of which shows people like. Saw today's Matinee of Something Rotten and absolutely loved it. Can't remember the last time I laughed so hard and much in a theatre. The show is stagey heaven with all of its innuendos and in-jokes (of which I've certainly missed quite a few) and I'm still humming A Musical. That's the show people should be queuing for over night. But back to topic: slept over it but, unfortunately, still feel the same. There was one more OK-ish song in act 2 and one more King George segment, but I disliked everything else. But, again, I was pretty much alone with my opinion, as I heard nothing but praises during the interval and after the show and going by the huge amount of applause the show got. Firstly, I can't stand hip hop. However, I really like In The Heights and hoped Hamilton('s score) would be the same. Unfortunately, Hamilton is almost exclusively hip hop, so it was really hard for me to sit through this. The few more melodic numbers were - how shall I put it - bearable, but far from being as good as ITH. A few minutes in the show, I was completely lost and had no idea what was going on and who was who. Maybe it's not so much of an issue for Americans who are being taught this part of their history in school, but I had never heard of the persons (bar Washington and Jefferson) or their relationships and actions before. I didn't even care for anyone. Also found the book boring and the show way too long. Having no real set (apart from the wooden frame/walkway and a few moving parts) and everyone wearing similar costumes didn't help either. At least I now know what the hype is about and that I'll give the show a miss when it transfers to London - irrespective of the cast. Lin-Manuel Miranda's entrance applause was the loudest and longest I've ever heard - even more than Idina Menzel got in If/Then after her "Hey it's me" (which happened to be at the same theatre). For the record: view from my seat (Orchestra C9) was perfectly fine, so if you want to see this show, I can recommend this seat as a non-premium seat (at a more than premium price).
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Post by charliec on Mar 12, 2016 23:45:44 GMT
When I did the cancellation line in October I started a line at 2:30pm and we were allowed to queue inside! Were you at least successful? A (staff) lady told me that meanwhile the cancellation line builds up over night. As I've said above: The guys in the tents are doing this professionally and selling their place in line to someone who doesn't want to wait for such a long time (I guess they are prebooked by them). These guys are in the queue (almost) every day. I did get a ticket. Row H stalls. An unused house seat as far as I can tell!
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Post by 49thand8th on Mar 13, 2016 4:22:01 GMT
We actually aren't being taught a lot of this in school -- at least not until college. Compared to a non-American, we're probably going to be more familiar with the names in passing, but I think part of the appeal for many is that it illuminates the light of people we haven't learned much about except later on in college. Or in reading on our own, if we're history geeks.
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Post by primitivewallflower on Mar 13, 2016 4:47:11 GMT
A few minutes in the show, I was completely lost and had no idea what was going on and who was who. Maybe it's not so much of an issue for Americans who are being taught this part of their history in school, but I had never heard of the persons (bar Washington and Jefferson) or their relationships and actions before. I didn't even care for anyone. It's a shame you didn't enjoy it. What's interesting is that I don't think Americans are terribly versed in any of the historical characters either until you get to George Washington (OK, and maybe George III). But maybe Washington and later Jefferson help Americans contextualize the story around figures they *are* familiar with. If so, the producers probably need to figure out a way to overcome this for London audiences. I heard that at The Public, the audience was given a printout of the Alexander Hamilton wikipedia page to read prior to the show, so maybe some variation of that would help. As for me, I just saw it in NY last week. I love the cast recording, but seeing it staged made me love it even more. One thing in particular that I didn't appreciate until I saw it live: This is truly a work of THEATER. As in, not some slick mega musical, but art conceived for the stage out of passion and talent. That, and the fact that it's so much FUNNIER staged, was refreshing, given the hype around it. It's an earnest musical but it never buckles under the weight of its own seriousness.
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Post by viserys on Mar 13, 2016 5:58:38 GMT
I don't know about a printout of the wikipedia page, but then playbills are rather poor when it comes to information value. I would assume that a typical London programme has a two-page article that sums up Hamilton's biography.
Having said that, if you are spent a fortune on tickets, why not take a bit to "prepare" yourself for what you are going to see? I knew absolutely nothing about Hamilton either (I wasn't even aware that he's the chap on the 10 dollar bill), so before I flew to New York last summer, I read Ron Chernow's biography (the one that inspired LMM) about him and watched "Sons of Liberty" (no Hamilton in that, but an interesting primer on the American revolution). So when I saw the musical, I didn't just know the general story, I could also appreciate more how cleverly LMM had adapted Chernow's biography and turned it into a show. I appreciate that LMM made me read the book and that, by extension, I learned a lot about the American revolution and its movers and shakers. Once in New York, we spent a few hours in Hamilton's footsteps, visited the Grange up in Harlem, then took the subway all the way south and visited Fraunces Tavern and Trinity Church.
(No, I'm not expecting everyone to do their homework like that before seeing a new show, just saying, if I don't know a thing about something/someone, why not find out more in advance?)
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Post by primitivewallflower on Mar 13, 2016 6:34:59 GMT
Having said that, if you are spent a fortune on tickets, why not take a bit to "prepare" yourself for what you are going to see? I agree this is ideal, but it's too much to expect a theatre audience to have read a full biography just to *follow* a show, though to emphasize: I'm not sure I agree that this is necessary with Hamilton even for a London audience. I followed the cast album just fine knowing next to nothing about the man. OTOH I'm literally on the last chapter of Chernow right now and I completely agree that it adds another layer of appreciation for the show (and the subject matter!).
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Post by Deleted on Mar 13, 2016 6:50:27 GMT
But a show (or any form of story telling really) shouldn't need the person to do research prior to watching it.
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Post by infofreako on Mar 13, 2016 7:17:45 GMT
I listened to it without researching the background and got along just fine
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Post by Deleted on Mar 13, 2016 8:17:26 GMT
Likewise, I'm from the UK and understood pretty much everything fine and that was before the cast recording was out. You do have to pay attention to what they're saying, but really you should be doing that when watching a show anyway.
I would assume a lot of people who see the show in London will have heard at least some of the music by then, especially with its success.
I don't think it's as taught in American education as people expect. Lin himself stated that all he knew about Hamilton was that he was the guy on the ten dollar bill and the way that he died.
It's certainly no more complicated than Les Mis for example.
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Post by BurlyBeaR on Mar 13, 2016 8:31:20 GMT
It's starting to sound more like homework than entertainment. And possibly a bit too "worthy"?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 13, 2016 8:36:20 GMT
It's starting to sound more like homework than entertainment. And possibly a bit too "worthy"? It's both. It's education that you enjoy learning. There's a reason why a lot of people coming out of this show have gone on to research the people involved much further. High school teachers are using this show to teach their kids and finding it extremely effective. www.newsweek.com/hamilton-biggest-thing-broadway-being-taught-classrooms-all-over-424212 [I'll post the text of the article as it's behind a paywall]
Hamilton is the Broadway success story of the year, maybe the decade. And it’s about to become the hottest item on your 11th grader’s U.S. history syllabus. In classrooms from New York City, where the show packs the Richard Rodgers Theatre nightly, to the West Coast, Hamilton is making educators rethink how they teach early U.S. political history—and making students rethink how much they care. "I first heard about it the way most of us did—from rapturous reviews," says Jim Cullen. A high school teacher at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in the Bronx, where he chairs the history department, Cullen's interests range from U.S. political history to popular music. (He’s probably the only New York City schoolteacher who’s published a book on Bruce Springsteen.) So when a group of Fieldston middle schoolers and faculty scored a block of tickets to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit musical about Alexander Hamilton, Cullen tagged along. He was startled by how much he loved the show. That was in the spring, before Hamilton debuted on Broadway. Then, in his advisory class in the fall, Cullen noticed his students had caught the bug. They blasted the Hamilton cast recording from their phones and devices. “They were singing these songs the way they might sing the latest release from Drake or Adele,” Cullen says. After noticing the Hamilton soundtrack made a dent in the Billboard 200 sales chart, he realized, "This has got tremendous cultural currency." So Cullen did the inevitable: He designed an entire course centered on Hamilton (the figure) and Hamilton (the show). He’ll be teaching Hamilton: A Musical Inquiry in the fall. Students will be asked to sift through primary sources like George Washington’s farewell address and show tunes like “One Last Time” and “Washington on Your Side”; one essay assignment is to pick a song from the cast recording and analyze it. And Cullen isn’t the only teacher mining Hamilton fever to get 16-year-olds enthused about the profoundly unsexy details of Revolutionary-era nation-building. For theatergoers, Hamilton has been a revelation. The show has drawn universal acclaim—a New York Times reviewer stopped just short of urging readers to “mortgage their houses and lease their children” for the chance to see it—and tickets routinely go for $400 or more on StubHub and eBay. (No wonder, since it’s sold out at least until September.) Celebrities ranging from David Byrne to the late Alan Rickman have been spotted in the audience; President Barack Obama deemed the show “fabulous.” But for educators, the play’s success is ripe with untapped teaching potential. Yes, it takes creative liberties—the Founding Fathers didn’t really spit rhymes or use phrases like “John Adams shat the bed”—but the story is historically sound. (“The thing about Hamilton’s life,” Lin-Manuel Miranda tells Newsweek, “is the truth is invariably more interesting than anything I could have made up.”) Historian Ron Chernow (whose 2004 biography of the first secretary of the treasury inspired the script) has praised the musical for capturing Hamilton’s ambition and his obsession with controlling his legacy. And along the way, Hamilton delves deep into U.S. history–friendly issues like the Constitutional Convention, the Federalist Papers and the bitter Adams vs. Thomas Jefferson presidential election of 1800. “It brings history to the classroom in such an exciting and engaging way,” says Patrick Sprinkle, who teaches U.S. history and public policy at the NYC Lab School for Collaborative Studies. Sprinkle recently played his students a few tracks from the show, including a back-and-forth between Hamilton and Jefferson. He’s used songs from another Broadway show with a historical spine, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, in previous years, and once he schlepped 82 students to see All the Way, which starred Bryan Cranston as Lyndon B. Johnson. But Hamilton is different, both because it’s fashioned from hip-hop and rap (a genre largely absent on Broadway) and because it casts actors of color to depict, as Miranda put it, “old, dead white men.” The show ruminates heavily on Hamilton’s status as a West Indies–born bastard child, and the immigration themes have resonated in the year of Donald Trump. “Many of our students are first-generation or second-generation Americans,” Sprinkle says. “The story speaks to them.” The irony? Miranda, who also plays the title role, wasn’t much of a social studies student in high school. “I basically lived in the English and communications department,” he tells Newsweek. He was a first-generation city kid attending Hunter College High School and then Wesleyan University, where he wrote and directed an early draft of the play In the Heights, which opened on Broadway in 2008. “It’s been kind of amazing to have my social studies teachers reach out.” Miranda realized Hamilton would be useful for educators years before the show was completed, when he performed what would become its opening number at a White House event in 2009. Since that video surfaced online, “the No. 1 YouTube comment has been, ‘My teacher showed us this in APUSH,’” Miranda says. “I think teachers used just that one clip for the past six years as their intro to Hamilton.” What he never anticipated was the scope of the Hamilton teaching phenomenon. The playwright has heard from “lots of teachers and educators” about bringing Hamilton into their curriculum. “I get videos from 4-year-olds to college students ... of them performing songs from this show,” he says. “They’re learning songs they like and weirdly learning U.S. history in the process.” Over the holidays, Miranda received a text about students raising money to buy their social studies teacher tickets to Hamilton for Christmas. “It’s very surreal and beautiful.” The trend has made its way to the opposite coast. In Los Angeles, Angelica Davila, an eighth-grade teacher and self-professed musical theater nerd, heard the Hamilton songs and immediately began planning an American Revolution unit. Davila works at a small charter school where faculty teach a variety of subjects and 95 percent of students are Hispanic. So she handed out a packet dividing the characters and songs into three categories—political, military and personal—and had them choose one figure on whom to write a five-page biography. “I teach a lower-income Latino population,” she explains. “They're really into hip-hop and R&B—especially ’90s hip-hop—and [Miranda] draws a lot from classic hip-hop. There are Biggie and Tupac references everywhere in the show. My kids were really drawn to that.” The eighth-graders started requesting Hamilton as background music even when they weren’t working on those projects. When it came time to choose a song to perform in the school’s annual winter concert, they picked Hamilton’s opening number. And though they are young, the kids picked up on the show’s racial inclusivity (Davila made a point of showing YouTube clips and interviews). “Not only is this the music they love to listen to on their own free time, they're seeing faces that look like theirs telling American history,” Davila says. “It's really challenging for them to relate to American history when their stories are not being told. With this musical and with the casting of the show in particular, they finally have a chance to see themselves in our country's history for the first time.” The material has been embraced by younger kids as well. “As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to find a way to use it in class,” Molly O'Steen, a fourth-grade teacher at Rodeph Sholom School in Manhattan, tells Newsweek. Though some of the songs aren’t age-appropriate, the kids have latched onto a playful series of songs sung by King George III. “[The class] is a pretty homogenous demographic of 9-year-old Jewish kids,” O’Steen says. “I wasn’t sure how into musicals they were. Or how into rap music. But they really love the music of it.” Most students, thwarted by distance or prohibitive ticket prices, won’t wind up seeing Hamilton on Broadway. There’ll be a movie someday, but not too soon (there are no plans to film the current cast, Miranda says, contrary to a widely spread misquote). A book containing the script and photos from the show is being published in the spring, but that’s hardly the same. Fortunately, educators and benefactors have found ways to bring some lower-income students to see the show in person. The Rockefeller Foundation in October joined forces with the show’s producers to commit $1.5 million to subsidize tickets for 20,000 New York City students. (The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has been involved, creating a Hamilton-related curriculum as an online resource.) And a theater teacher at the Democracy Prep Charter High School in Harlem took a group of more than 100 students to see Hamilton during its off-Broadway run last spring. "That was the first [show] that didn't make me want to go to sleep when I was in it," says 16-year-old Pedro De Los Angeles, a student at the school. "It just stuck in my head, and I found history interesting. If history class was like that every day, I'm pretty sure the Regents wouldn't be a problem." The student is an actor himself, and Hamilton inspired him to perform in a school production of 9 to 5. "Once I saw Hamilton, I was like, Whoa—a musical is just on a whole 'nother level. I was like, Maybe I should try, even though I can't sing." The Democracy Prep outing was courtesy of a Theatre Development Fund program, says the teacher who coordinated it, Lisa Kowalski. The students were later assigned to imagine writing their own obituaries, to consider their legacies, as Hamilton does throughout the show. Some of the kids stayed after the show to meet Miranda. (“They’re obsessed, as I am, with his work,” Kowalski says.) One African-American student reportedly told principal Natasha Trivers, “Hamilton made me realize that this is our country too.” This show has done more than any work of pop culture to bring Alexander Hamilton out of the ivory tower and into the popular consciousness. It’s shown how the founder helped shape and articulate the country’s ideals, and regardless of whether or not it helps kids understand the Federalist Papers, Miranda is happy to be bringing theater to the 11th-grade masses. “The hope is always to expose theater to new audiences,” he says. “It's the oldest thing we got going. If the robots win, if Terminator 2 comes true, if the robots take over, we're still going to tell each other stories in the dark. “There’s going to be kids who see this show, [and] this will be their first Broadway show,” he adds. “That's just what musicals are going to look like for them. Of course it's a cast full of actors of color. Of course it's music that uses hip-hop and contemporary music but also tells a story. That's just going to be their default experience of what a musical is. That just blows my mind.”
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Post by Michael on Mar 13, 2016 13:24:41 GMT
[...]Having said that, if you are spent a fortune on tickets, why not take a bit to "prepare" yourself for what you are going to see? I knew absolutely nothing about Hamilton either (I wasn't even aware that he's the chap on the 10 dollar bill), so before I flew to New York last summer, I read Ron Chernow's biography (the one that inspired LMM) about him and watched "Sons of Liberty" (no Hamilton in that, but an interesting primer on the American revolution). [...] (No, I'm not expecting everyone to do their homework like that before seeing a new show, just saying, if I don't know a thing about something/someone, why not find out more in advance?) But a show (or any form of story telling really) shouldn't need the person to do research prior to watching it. What he said. Personally, I think that the book writer did a poor job if you can't follow the story without doing some preparation. As a counter example: Despite knowing absolutely nothing about Mormons (they are not very common in Germany), I had no problems following and understanding Book of Mormon. I do however understand that I'm part of a very small minority who didn't like the show.
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Post by galinda on Mar 13, 2016 13:36:06 GMT
Not read the whole thread but read the bit about the rumours of the show coming over here. Would this show sell here in a large west end theatre? In the heights in struggling in a small theatre (was half empty when I went) what has this show got to offer the average theatre goer? Not juke box, not based on a film and the average person doesn't care about American history. I don't understand why people seem to think it will work here. At least Book of Mormon has the South Park writers connection.
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Post by Seriously on Mar 13, 2016 13:50:14 GMT
Thankfully I read several articles on Jellicle cats before seeing Cats.
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Post by 49thand8th on Mar 13, 2016 14:21:45 GMT
Is it possible Hamilton would choose a smaller-sized West End house as a precaution? Mormon did when it first opened on Broadway, and that seemed to have served it well.
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Post by primitivewallflower on Mar 13, 2016 16:31:37 GMT
Is it possible Hamilton would choose a smaller-sized West End house as a precaution? Mormon did when it first opened on Broadway, and that seemed to have served it well. I thought there was an specific West End theatre that had been rumored? I don't know NYC theatres well but the Richard Rodgers struck me as smallish, and since then I've heard that Hamilton has a built-in seat disadvantage against some other big shows like Lion King (~300 fewer seats IIRC). Hamilton's not quite as bare bones as, say, A Chorus Line but it would not surprise me at all if it runs on the cheap side to keep the lights on, so maybe the economics allow for a smaller venue.
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Post by Jon on Mar 13, 2016 16:49:41 GMT
The Richard Rodgers is 1300 seats which is mid sized so ideally they'll want a theatre in London that is similar in capacity.
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Post by PalelyLaura on Mar 14, 2016 14:29:12 GMT
I normally have a self-imposed rule about not listening to cast recordings before the show. I broke this rule for Hamilton because of all the hype surrounding it. For me, it lives up to the hype - I'm not a fan of hip-hop but I love the music and can't stop listening to it. I had no prior knowledge of or interest in American history before listening to the recording - but I had no trouble following the story. Still, I've added the Ron Chernow bio to my wishlist because I want to learn more.
Hamilton reminds me of Les Mis - both are big epic shows with a vast cast of characters (although Hamilton uses real historical characters rather than fictional ones like LM). I find the soundtrack very emotional and moving in parts - I can only imagine how much of an impact it makes on the stage. I can't wait until it comes to London.
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571 posts
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Post by westendwendy on Mar 14, 2016 15:27:58 GMT
I dread to think of what the prices are going to be for the West End transfer. More than Mormon?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2016 15:34:55 GMT
Standard West End prices, I'd presume. Or at least comparable to Mormon. If it does become a massive seller here, I can see prices creeping up around the edges as time goes by (higher price premium seats, less-cheap cheap seats), but I don't think Mackintosh would shoot himself in the foot by inflating the prices for the West End run beyond the norm.
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