Hamilton (Disney +)

REVIEW BY: ROBERT CHANDLER

What a joy!

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s HAMILTON, on Disney Plus, is excellent. A treat! 

I never went to see it in on stage (I’m not such a fan of the theatre, my legs are too long to ever feel comfortable in those pokey places.)

Watching it, and succumbing to its beat and energy, you get a sense of American history being explored in a vital, compelling and contemporary way. 

Maybe it’s not for everybody. Some people just do not like musicals. But this is brilliant, and brings so much life, wit and heartache to its founding fathers chronicle. It tells the story of Alexander Hamilton and his wife, Eliza Schuyler, during the war of independence and the setting up of government that followed. Hamilton and his wife’s stories are not often told, and the idea of whose story gets to be told through history is one of the play’s themes.

I liked the staging. No holograms, no bullshit sets, no fancy props; just space for the drama and dance, and a revolving centre, which is used judiciously and with great power.

We watched it at home, on a big screen, lights down, volume up, food and drink spread out before us for its two hours and forty minutes running time, cleared the plates during the intermission, and loved every second of it.