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Canberra Today 15°/17° | Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Hamilton opens to an adoring Melbourne welcome

Jason Arrow as Hamilton. Photo: Daniel Boud

“Hamilton,” Her Majesty’s Theatre, Melbourne, currently booking until July 31. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

A LOUD roar of appreciation from the hyped-up crowd greeted the opening of the hit musical “Hamilton” in Melbourne last week, March 25.

Small matter that this was the same Australian cast production seen recently in Sydney, for as the American producer told the audience, not only had the show’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, got the inspiration for another hit musical while he was performing at the nearby Comedy Theatre years ago, but now the three biggest shows on Broadway – “Hamilton” itself, “Moulin Rouge” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” –  were playing in Melbourne.

In acknowledgement of this, the state’s premier and leading politicians turned out and everybody in the audience was invited to a slap-up party afterwards at the State Library.

Sung-through in a potpourri of hip-hop, jazz, R&B and Broadway, “Hamilton” comes across as more operatic and epic than any conventional musical.

Because of the dominant hip-hop medium, with its rich internal rhymes, the dialogue runs seamlessly throughout as characters pitch ideas and retort to each other and the political drama of revolution unfolds.

But surprisingly, and this is not much advertised, the hip-hop permits low-key moments and subtlety as intellectual opponents Hamilton (Jason Arrow) and Aaron Burr (Lyndon Watts) spar verbally.

Instead of a  conventional conductor, the chief keyboard player is conducting and it is notable that the pianos dominate, allowing Miranda‘s sharp, incisive lyrics to hit home.

The Schuyler sisters. Photo: Daniel Boud

To me the dialogue was the thing – elaborate double and  internal rhymes, played out in single and double-time. And just as Shakespeare captured the English voice rhythms in iambic pentameter, so Miranda captures in hip-hop the natural cadences of African and American English for a tale of American history seen through contemporary eyes.

Miranda also takes a fresh look at the founding fathers of the US by casting with people of colour, allowing a “now” at what happened “then”.

This production is an affirmation of the quality of Australian performing artists, especially those from diverse backgrounds, with the WA Academy of Performing Arts and Sydney’s Brent Street Studios as front runners in having trained the talent.

The show looks good, staged on a magnificent multipurpose set designed by David Korins.

Paul Tazewell’s costumes, created from natural fabrics, show off the athletic bodies of the artists in a constantly moving kaleidoscope of action.

Writing a musical about a federal treasurer is a challenge at the best of times – think “Keating the musical” – but Miranda has taken on no less a galaxy of stars than the founding fathers of the US – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, French sympathiser Lafayette and Hamilton’s nemesis, Aaron Burr, played in a very restrained and sympathetic manner by Watts.

Brent Hill plays King George III as a buffoon. Photo: Daniel Boud

This is history on the run and in the second act Hamilton’s moves and the various battles becomes a bit much to keep up with, so Miranda adopts the technique of sketching some of the fathers in broad brush strokes.

Lafayette, powerfully rapped by Victory Ndukwe, turns into Thomas Jefferson, an almost malicious caricature, while Brent Hill makes a meal of King George III as a buffoon.

A softening of the story comes in the form of the Schuyler sisters, especially Eliza, who Hamilton marries and Angelica, who is a kind of soul-sister to him. Marty Alix brings pathos to his role as Hamilton’s doomed young son.

So long is the stretch of history that there’s very little room for intimacy, but this is no “Les Miserables”, another sweeping historical drama, because it’s not fiction.

“Hamilton” famously twists the normal racial hierarchy and in its casting it proposes to the audience a new way of looking at history and also a great big “why not?”

 

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Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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