So, Hamilton. Saw it for the first time. 3/5 stars, pretty OK. What works, what doesn’t? All opinions completely accurate and indisputable.

The retrospective framing device is off-putting, reminiscent of a greatest-hits compilation. This happened and the this happened. The exception’s when it does what a musical does best, elucidating/amplifying emotion. Eliza intro rewind and the duel freeze-frame are electric.

The music is like Les Mis in that there’s so much that what gets repeated gets repetitive. It also can’t maintain 2.5 hours of great lyricism, which is probably mathematically impossible for something that has to maintain a narrative.

The performances and choreography are stellar. All of the cast deserve to be stars. It’s incredible to watch the same actors completely change characters between halves.

The show is content to tell us Hamilton is a genius rather than showing us how. Accordingly, all the parts where he’s a genius are boring, and the parts where it shows us exactly how he f***s up are super engrossing. Maybe that’s a feature not a bug tho?

The rotating stage is suuuuuper cool.

Again like Les Mis, the supporting characters are so rich they overshadow the main character (thinking more of mayonnaise boy Marius more than Valjean here). Foils and antagonists steal the show constantly.

I hate when people talk about how history is watching or do hagiographies of their heroes. I’ve sat through too many fundamentalists and politicians doing this. Unfortunately, Hamilton also does it a lot.

(Circling back, Hamilton *was* a genius and it would have been super cool to see how! But personal politics is as/more(?) interesting as financial politics and what we got was also really interesting.)

Arron Burr as a personality opposite of Hamilton is so so so so sooo good. “Wait for It” is a French window into my psyche, absolute personal standout. (Incidentally, “Stars” is my favorite from Les Mis.)

Overall I enjoyed it, though I don’t know if I’d sit through it again. A few songs might make it into my Spotify rotation. I don’t regret watching it by any means.

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