Hamilton: Los Angeles

Oct 30, 2017 10:43

It was absolutely wonderful - worth every minute of the eight hours I spent in line for tickets.

I wish I could see it again, because the staging is really busy (derived from the Broadway staging, but not a total copy), and in all the scenes with the ensemble, I probably missed at least half of what was going on. It had a tremendous sense of energy, and was a model of how to do set changes (consisting solely of moving furniture around in full view of the audience) in a way that makes them part of the show rather than interruptions.

A few uses of props/furniture I thought were especially great were "Hurricane," where furniture spins around Hamilton in slow motion, borne on storm winds, and a bunch using papers or writing: "The Reynolds Pamphlets," where the pamphlets are thrown at Hamilton until he's standing in a blizzard of his own making, letters that get passed across the stage, actor to actor, giving a sense of how far they had to travel; the many parts where Hamilton is madly scribbling away, once on a desk held horizontally - some platform, any platform will do.

All the big ensemble numbers were wonderful - the cabinet battles, the battles of the Revolution, "My Shot," the tender heartbreak of "It's Quiet Uptown" and the glee of "Washington On Your Side."

I loved almost all the performances. I liked Laurens/Philip (Ruben J. Carabal) more than I had before, and Hercules Mulligan/Madison (Mathenee Treco) equaled the Broadway performance - he was hilarious and larger than life. King George (Rory O'Malley) was a crackup. All the Schuyler sisters were great, but the brittle, brilliant, mohawked Angelica (Emmy Raver-Lampman) was my favorite. Washington (Dan Belnavis) was very good, and perfect in his final song.

Hamilton (Michael Luwoye) was fantastic - great singing and rapping, tons of emotional range, a fighter and scrapper and underdog. He was shorter than most of the cast (including Eliza), which really worked for his interpretation. But my very favorite was Jefferson (Jordan Donica). Daveed Diggs is a lot to live up to, but this Jefferson made the role his own. He had a huge Afro that he made a character in its own right, and wonderful body language - sauntering, skipping, lounging, dancing backwards, gleefully swinging his legs on "Never gon' be President now." His scenes with Hamilton and Madison were perfection.

Disappointments: Donica's Lafayette was not very impressive and couldn't rap fast enough, though the actor killed as Jefferson. More significantly, I didn't like Burr. It was Joshua Henry, who's gotten rave reviews, but he had distracting mike or vocal issues, and his performance just wasn't that impressive/layered.

At the end, one of the actors (I'm not sure who he played - I think one of the ensemble) gave the single best fundraising speech I've ever heard, for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, which has apparently branched out into hurricane relief as well, including for Puerto Rico. I donated some money and also bought a "Pick Up A Pen, Start Writing" pen.

Overall, it had all of the emotion and electric life you want in a live performance. When I was a stage manager, there were some shows I'd eventually get bored with and some I never got tired of watching. I could see this every night, forever, and never get bored.

Crossposted to https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/2167206.html. Comment here or there.

theatre: hamilton

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