Hamilton
Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin
★★★★☆
“Rise up!” – in ovation or revolution. Hamilton, the much-hyped musical-theatre phenomenon, has arrived in Dublin for the first time. With a production history tied to recent US elections – Hamilton premiered off-Broadway in 2015, was thrust into the international spotlight in 2020, when it was streamed on Disney+, and embarked on its first tour of Britain and Ireland in this, another American election year – Lin-Manuel Miranda’s artful history of the establishment of the United States continues to chime with our times.
Told through the lens of an unlikely hero’s extraordinary rise and fall, it is a passionate defence of liberty, equality and democracy. In case the contemporary viewer is in any doubt about where the privilege of American freedoms has come from, Miranda’s oblique perspective is an emphatic reminder. Anticipating victory over the British forces in the Battle of Yorktown, our “bastard, orphan, son of a whore” hero, Alexander Hamilton, and his French collaborator, the Marquis de Lafayette, celebrate their unique contribution to the fight for freedom with a high five and the musical’s most famous line: “Immigrants, we get the job done.”
Miranda’s sung and rapped-through musical is as “scrappy and hungry” as the protagonist himself. Right from the opening scene-setting song, Alexander Hamilton, to the reflective final number, Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story, the music restlessly plumbs rap and R&B rhythms in the service of its narrative. Political debates are staged as rap battles, personal rivalries are punctuated by ghetto burns. Associate director Stephen Whitson, building on Thomas Kail’s original work, ensures the ensemble keep pace with the unfolding story’s urgency. The action barely pauses long enough to let an ecstatic audience applaud popular anthems such as My Shot, The Story of Tonight or The Room Where It Happens.
Miranda never privileges politics over the personal, however, and the central tension between Hamilton (played by Shaq Taylor, who grows from meek to magisterial as the show goes on) and his rival Aaron Burr (Sam Oladeinde, keeping his cards close to his chest with his rivals but yielding his secrets to us) is the pivot on which the plot turns. It also becomes a showcase for two exceptional performers’ talents. Hamilton is the story of an underdog’s victory; in this repositioning of history, Burr’s position as the underdog is just as significant, and Oladeinde makes sure we know it.
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Despite the dense verbosity of Miranda’s script, this is a production that is constantly moving. David Korins’s multilevelled brick and wood-scaffold set, with its rotating centre, is transformed from ship to shipyard, city tavern to battlefield. Choreography from Andy Blankenbuehler with Carrie-Anne Ingrouille brings a big-budget Broadway feel, although the bustling busyness of dancers in bustiers and riding boots occasionally distracts from the economy of Miranda’s narrative construction.
“Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” are the words with which Miranda ushers the audience into the night. But the lingering refrain from this gripping 160-minute musical is “Rise up!” And whether you do so in acknowledgment of the talent on stage or of Hamilton’s impassioned political plea seems irrelevant.
Hamilton is at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin, until Saturday, November 16th
