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Post by Deleted on Jan 19, 2018 21:23:58 GMT
You're gonna think I'm rich or something cause I'm flying to London again just for the weekend (I'm not rich, btw). Seeing this tomorrow at 2.30pm (3rd time!).
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1,211 posts
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Post by theatrefan77 on Jan 19, 2018 22:06:45 GMT
You don't sound poor either! Ha ha. Don't blame you anyway. I also spend a fortune in theatre outings.
Hope you got a great seat. Enjoy!
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Post by Mattie on Jan 21, 2018 12:56:45 GMT
I saw the show last week and loved it (but not quite as much as I wanted to from having listened to the cast recording!).
I think the relationship between Hamilton and Burr comes across brilliantly with this West End cast. As has already been noted, Burr is more of the outsider (and Giles is a terrific actor) and I had the impression right from the start that he wanted Hamilton’s friendship and felt snubbed by Hamilton and his friends throughout the show. It makes Burr’s journey quite poignant and “Dear Theodosia” and the final duel were highlights (although for some reason “Wait for It” didn’t do much for me on the night despite being one of my favourites on the cast album). Jamael is also a great actor, and I really liked his interpretation of Hamilton, particularly his relationship with the male cast members.
I loved all the main male cast members, in fact. Agree that Jason should tone down his French accent as Lafayette, but enjoyed his Jefferson very much indeed. Michael Jibson deservedly brought the house down - a very intelligent, technically accomplished performance in both singing and performing the songs. Special mention to Cleve September, who really made the most of his characters and, for me, became very important to the emotional heart of the show.
I am always reluctant to criticise performers, but I would look forward to seeing the show with a different Eliza. Rachelle’s voice is incredible, but I felt her performance was inconsistent - not enough steel or strength in the early Eliza to justify the dramatic shift into a very angry performance in “Burn”, struggling slightly with conveying the few (but important) non singing lines, and little chemistry with Jamael (who appeared to be working hard and not getting very much back). Rachelle can be amazing in the right role, but I think that Eliza has the potential to seem underwritten and it takes a very special actor to make the character work.
Rachel John was very good, but again I didn’t feel she had much chemistry with Jamael or Rachelle. I have always loved “Take a Break” on the recording (and think it is such an important song for the female characters) but it didn’t make much impact in the performance I saw. She performed “Satisfied” brilliantly though. Again, Angelica seemed underwritten to me and I wonder if that is the fault of the show or whether a different actor could make her character seem more important to Hamilton.
It’s still a 5 star show, and I will return if I can get tickets, but ideally I would like to see how the show works with the same male cast but a different Eliza!
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Post by Deleted on Jan 21, 2018 13:30:43 GMT
Yesterday was amazing, best performance I've seen so far. Full cast and they were on fire (again, Giles just fascinates me). Finally managed to buy the "Hamilton the Revolution" book! It's heavy af. Started reading it on the train back to Gatwick; so happy I bought it!
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Post by ensembleswings on Jan 21, 2018 13:42:58 GMT
I'm finally seeing this tomorrow! I say finally but the reality is the past year has flown by for me so I don't feel I've been waiting all that long, the countdown only truly started for me when previews opened, even so tomorrow!
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Post by profquatermass on Jan 21, 2018 15:15:26 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jan 21, 2018 19:01:42 GMT
Btw, I was shocked yesterday when there was no applause during the Battle of Yorktown, you know, that moment where all the action stops for a couple of seconds before "after a week of fighting..."
It is visually stunning and it gives me chills every time. The audience reaction was crazy on my previous visits, but you could have heard a pin drop yesterday.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 21, 2018 20:13:45 GMT
I love it when there's no applause in the middle of Yorktown, the quiet is a key part of the song for me and I've been disappointed by the applause when its happened while I've been there.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 21, 2018 20:25:17 GMT
I love it when there's no applause in the middle of Yorktown, the quiet is a key part of the song for me and I've been disappointed by the applause when its happened while I've been there. Ugh yeah do people clap in that bit? luckily when I saw it on Broadway they didn't (and y'all know Americans LOVE to clap things) because it's that *beat* of quiet that makes it...
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Post by andrew on Jan 21, 2018 20:28:53 GMT
I can't say for sure, but I've never felt like that moment was designed to have applause. It's the end of the fight, where the British have given up and the fighting suddenly stops. It's a cool moment visually and musically and that gets interrupted if people clap. I was happy the second time round where there wasn't an applause.
(whilst we're on it, I also felt that applauding Jamael Westman, an essentially unknown actor, when he made his entrance during previews and sang the very first "Alex Hamilton" of the opening number, was completely wrong. He's not Patti Lupone, he's not the author of the show, nobody's seen him do this before, I don't get why people were clapping and screaming for 20 seconds. You're interrupting the song, now shush.)
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Post by theatrefan77 on Jan 21, 2018 23:09:53 GMT
I agree and also felt that applauding Jamael Westman's entrance didn't make sense. Couldn't help but thinking that many audience members had been watching the bootleg of the original Broadway cast on youtube and heard people applauding and screaming when Lin Manuel Miranda sang the first 'Alexander Hamilton' and they were trying to recreate that atmosphere in London. Luckily that only happened during previews.
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Post by christya on Jan 21, 2018 23:23:09 GMT
Nobody did the entrance applause in the first song at the very first preview, and I was glad it didn't happen. With very, very few exceptions I detest entrance applause. Save it for after they've done something!
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Post by tf on Jan 22, 2018 6:02:14 GMT
Hi all. I wanted to ask you guys for advice on my best chances to see Rachelle Ann Go and Christine Allado perform. Do they typically perform all shows unless they're sick or on holiday? If I go on a Thursday, would they likely be on for the evening performance while their covers go on for the matinee? Or would their skeds be like Miss Saigon where the alternate Kim normally performs Saturday matinees, and the evening show of a two-show weekday (Wed or Thur)?
I'd be flying in from the Philippines and plan to see it in April. I know tickets are hard to come by, so I've reached out to the Hamilton team for their hospitality deals.
I've also tried asking the ladies' social media accounts, but haven't gotten a reply. No hard feelings about that.
Thanks in advance for your advice.
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Post by poster J on Jan 22, 2018 8:44:23 GMT
Hi all. I wanted to ask you guys for advice on my best chances to see Rachelle Ann Go and Christine Allado perform. Do they typically perform all shows unless they're sick or on holiday? If I go on a Thursday, would they likely be on for the evening performance while their covers go on for the matinee? Or would their skeds be like Miss Saigon where the alternate Kim normally performs Saturday matinees, and the evening show of a two-show weekday (Wed or Thur)? I'd be flying in from the Philippines and plan to see it in April. I know tickets are hard to come by, so I've reached out to the Hamilton team for their hospitality deals. I've also tried asking the ladies' social media accounts, but haven't gotten a reply. No hard feelings about that. Thanks in advance for your advice. No-one has an alternate except for Hamilton, so unless they're sick or on holiday, they'll be on. But Hamilton doesn't publish cast holidays so your only way to find that out is to ask the ladies directly on Twitter again closer to the time and hope they reply. Or follow West End Understudies on twitter because they'll usually get the info on the day (though not always, they didn't tweet about the understudy Burr being on last time I went, though they had tweeted that Miriam-Teak Lee would be on as Angelica, which was correct). The only way to pretty much guarantee seeing them is to wait until the day and get a ticket on the day if you haven't heard or seen anything to say they will be off. That will probably involve the returns queue. Otherwise there are usually premium (and sometimes some other return) seat releases the week before the show.
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Post by squidward on Jan 22, 2018 19:48:35 GMT
I can't say for sure, but I've never felt like that moment was designed to have applause. It's the end of the fight, where the British have given up and the fighting suddenly stops. It's a cool moment visually and musically and that gets interrupted if people clap. I was happy the second time round where there wasn't an applause. (whilst we're on it, I also felt that applauding Jamael Westman, an essentially unknown actor, when he made his entrance during previews and sang the very first "Alex Hamilton" of the opening number, was completely wrong. He's not Patti Lupone, he's not the author of the show, nobody's seen him do this before, I don't get why people were clapping and screaming for 20 seconds. You're interrupting the song, now shush.) . Ha! I totally agree and your break down of why this behaviour is somewhat off was spot-on and[did make me laugh (‘He’s not Patti Lupone...). Mind you in SpongeBob Squarepants - The Musical, the whooping and hollering when SB was revealed from beneath his pineapple, was expansive and the whooping and hollering wasn’t coming from children). Ethan James is also a newcomer and at that point in the show had done nothing apart from laying on the floor. When Squidward appeared (Gavin Lee with four legs), the noise from the audience was deafening. Obviously this trend is more frustrating in an earnest show like Hamilton where it’s vital to hear every word,but it is a strange almost Pavlovian response when an audience starts giving the love before an actor has done anything. The same thing happened when I saw Dear Evan Hansen.Had it been directed towards Ben Platt, it might have been understandable, but we saw his replacement Noah Gavin.All I can say about that is that I imagine the people who were overcome with joy at first sight of Galvin might have regretted their thunderous applause and whooping by the end of the show about which the less said the better 😖.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 23, 2018 9:38:46 GMT
So obviously this is very very good and I’m glad I saw it. However – if I was going to write a review, the title would be ‘It’s not the messiah and it’s not even a very naughty boy’. Main immediate reactions:
1 – there is no way now to see Hamilton the musical and not Hamilton the cult, and that’s a shame. A group behind me were having a full on emotional meltdown before it even started, and the whole audience was like a revivalist meeting. There was joining in, singing along, in crowd type action, etc – in 18 months it will have probably gone the full Rocky Horror. It’s all great fun for the super fans I’m sure, but it just made me grumpy.
2 – it could benefit from losing 20 mins with a bit of judicous cutting. It’s great, but felt saggy in places and some of the music became very samey (reinforced by the fact that it’s massively amplified, which at least helped to drown out some of the super-fan joinings in and over reactions). Even Hamlet takes less time to die. By the end I didn’t care, I just wanted to be able to stretch my legs.
3 – for something held up as a very modern, 21st century musical, the attitude towards gender is regressive to the point of being antediluvian. I don’t really know anything about all the history of this, but brief googling seems to suggest that the Schuyler sisters were quite politically involved – and they were living through a revolution which they must have had views on. And even if they didn’t, you’re playing fast and loose with history anyway so you have a lot of choice about how you present them. So why are they presented as having not one single thought in their heads that don’t involve men?? Eliza’s songs are basically: I love my husband, I wish my husband would come home more, my husband is sleeping with a tart, my husband’s dead. I mean, seriously?? I thought we’d moved past the idea by now that it’s acceptable to present women as nothing but adjuncts to men. The scenes with the big visionary man being nagged to come home more by the little wife would have been considered out of date in the 1950s. I think this is the thing that’s stuck in my craw more than anything else.
It was also an unwelcome lesson in how very much you can spend to get a crap and spectacularly uncomfortable seat.
Basically very few things could live up to the hype it’s had – and it isn’t one of them.
I know this sounds negative. I really enjoyed it. But it’s not really doing anything new and in some aspects is really old fashioned, which isn’t what I was expecting.
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Post by poster J on Jan 23, 2018 13:03:41 GMT
1 – there is no way now to see Hamilton the musical and not Hamilton the cult, and that’s a shame. A group behind me were having a full on emotional meltdown before it even started, and the whole audience was like a revivalist meeting. There was joining in, singing along, in crowd type action, etc – in 18 months it will have probably gone the full Rocky Horror. It’s all great fun for the super fans I’m sure, but it just made me grumpy I disagree entirely with this. Yes, there is hype of a level not seen in the West End since Wicked opened, but cult? No - half the people around me didn't actually know what the show was really about, they just came to see the new hot ticket in town. That's just hype, nothing else. And I knew hardly anything about the show either when I first saw it. Those ridiculous melodramatic fans you speak of are hugely annoying, but they have been by far the minority in the audience both times I have seen the show. Most people know there is hype and know it's in many ways a generation-defining show, but there was no joining in or singing along (except maybe a few people mouthing the words, but that happens at half the shows in the West End). There were huge rounds of applause and cheering at the end of each number, but again I've seen that at many other shows. That's a reaction to what has been seen on stage and a show of appreciation for the performers that happens at any good show. What marked this show out for me was the total opposite of what you're describing - during the show, aside from when people were laughing, you could have heard a pin drop in the auditorium - the audience was engrossed in the show. So I think you're very unfairly generalizing about a huge proportion of the audience at this show - maybe you got a bad night for the number of superfans who were in, but I've been in much worse audiences for West End shows than this one.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 23, 2018 13:28:58 GMT
poster J Well, yeah, I can only say what I see. It was similar to what I imagine a Jeremy Corbyn rally would be like. At the end, my friend whispered to me "I won't say what I think until we're out of here and I won't get lynched". All of us definitely thought the atmosphere was a tad fevered.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 23, 2018 14:57:00 GMT
poster J Well, yeah, I can only say what I see. It was similar to what I imagine a Jeremy Corbyn rally would be like. At the end, my friend whispered to me "I won't say what I think until we're out of here and I won't get lynched". All of us definitely thought the atmosphere was a tad fevered. It was the same at the performance I was it. There was even 2 people in front of me in costume, including pistols!
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Post by ensembleswings on Jan 23, 2018 17:30:05 GMT
Finally saw the show last night, I did feel it probably wouldn't live up to the hype or my own expectations but it most definitely did. Marsha Songcome was on as Peggy/Maria and Alexzandra was on in place of Miriam-Teak, they were the only changes to an otherwise full cast (Monday night so Ash Hunter was Hamilton) Overall I feel it's a strong cast that all work well together, standouts have to be Ash Hunter, Jason Pennycooke (particularly as Jefferson) and Tarinn Callender. The ensemble were great as well, felt they'd all gelled well, there didn't seem to be a weak link at all. I honestly thought I'd see the show, enjoy it, be glad I saw it and then that would be that. However, I'm now sat fearing for my bank balance as I go through and check for return tickets, I'm already feeling the need to see it again.
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Post by showtoones on Jan 23, 2018 17:33:53 GMT
For those who have seen Ash and Jamael, how would you characterize the difference in how they each play the character? Has Ash improved as some people thought he was tentative (understandably) in his first few performances....
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Post by 49thand8th on Jan 23, 2018 17:43:21 GMT
So obviously this is very very good and I’m glad I saw it. However – if I was going to write a review, the title would be ‘It’s not the messiah and it’s not even a very naughty boy’. Main immediate reactions: 1 – there is no way now to see Hamilton the musical and not Hamilton the cult, and that’s a shame. A group behind me were having a full on emotional meltdown before it even started, and the whole audience was like a revivalist meeting. There was joining in, singing along, in crowd type action, etc – in 18 months it will have probably gone the full Rocky Horror. It’s all great fun for the super fans I’m sure, but it just made me grumpy. I was talking to a Broadway actor who saw it about a year into the run and he said he had a great time, "but it was like a rock concert sometimes," and he didn't mean it in a good way. I haven't seen the show myself since about October 2015, but I can see how it's all turned a bit grotesque — but maybe that's also my impression bleeding off from the first BroadwayCon, which may as well have been called HamilCon.
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Post by lolasangel on Jan 23, 2018 19:01:46 GMT
For those who have seen Ash and Jamael, how would you characterize the difference in how they each play the character? Has Ash improved as some people thought he was tentative (understandably) in his first few performances.... Ash: Ash’s Hamilton is very confident, innocent at times and very loveable. and you can see his Hamilton is trying to take everything on board from washington/burr. Ash’s voice is much stronger Jamael: I found Jamaels Hamilton much more sensitive (not that its an overly bad thing) but I thought he was a bit slow to get going. He has perfected Hamiltons frustrations but I think he needs to be louder, his voice is much too quiet and he often mumbles.
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Post by tf on Jan 24, 2018 1:53:46 GMT
Thanks for everything you'd written, poster J. I've just remembered that Rachelle got engaged in Sept, so her wedding's coming up soon. I don't expect her to announce when it'd be, but I'm gonna consider that when I buy tickets.
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Post by singularsensation10 on Jan 24, 2018 8:33:01 GMT
Ash: Ash’s Hamilton is very confident, innocent at times and very loveable. and you can see his Hamilton is trying to take everything on board from washington/burr. Ash’s voice is much stronger Jamael: I found Jamaels Hamilton much more sensitive (not that its an overly bad thing) but I thought he was a bit slow to get going. He has perfected Hamiltons frustrations but I think he needs to be louder, his voice is much too quiet and he often mumbles. I would agree with this. I much preferred Ash because of his vocal strengths and his loveable character. Jamael is much more mature, which comes across in his stage presence and characterisation but for me, I warmed more to Ash’s Hamilton.
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