‘Hamilton’ burnishes its own legacy on Disney+: Review

It is very easy, looking at Hamilton in 2020, to get lost in the discourse surrounding it before you even get to the show.

You probably remember the overwhelming hype that surrounded it in the mid-2010s, and the impassioned debates that followed. You might remember the political statements it made or didn’t, and wonder if they aren’t out of date by now. Perhaps you have opinions about its creator, its fandom, its inspiration, its legacy. And maybe you regard it now as a relic of a more optimistic era — still inspiring, sure, but a bit heartbreaking and possibly even embarrassing. (Take it from me, a person who owns a Captain America-as-Hamilton t-shirt.)

History, Hamilton reminds us, is made by people, not legends.

But actually watch Hamilton — which you can do now on Disney+ — and it becomes the simplest thing in the world to let all of that melt away and get swept up in the show itself, in its drama and exuberance and virtuosity, and remember why it was worthy of so much chatter in the first place.

Filmed in June 2016, the just-released recording features the entire original Broadway cast, including Lin-Manuel Miranda as Alexander Hamilton, Leslie Odom Jr. as Aaron Burr, Phillipa Soo as Eliza Hamilton, and Renée Elise Goldsberry as Angelica Schuyler. For those who never made it to the Richard Rodgers Theatre while this configuration was still intact (including yours truly, who didn’t see it until 2017), it’s a treat to finally see for ourselves the performances that so stunned the world in 2015, and that were immortalized on the cast album that same year.

Director Thomas Kail, who also directed the stage show, favors an unfussy approach that emphasizes the individual performances, albeit sometimes at the expense of the show’s staging and choreography. Close-ups catch subtle gestures you might have missed even from the expensive seats, like Angelica’s pained expression as she seals her own romantic fate, but you may wonder if you’re missing the spectacular dance moves of “Rewind” behind her.

Still, it’s an effective way to capture the show’s emotions, if not its sweep, and so much of Hamilton‘s power comes from those emotions. Hamilton may about the most grandiose sorts of things — destiny and legacy, the founding of a country and the formation of its cultural myths — but it asks you to care as much about Burr’s bitter jealousy of his rival or Eliza’s fury at her unfaithful husband as much as you do about whether or not George Washington (Christopher Jackson) gets those extra troops he asked for. History, it reminds us, is made by people, not legends.

It’s not an original observation, but it’s one that bears repeating, and it’s further underlined by the purposeful choice to cast non-white leads and draw from diverse musical influences. As Americans, we’re taught from childhood to revere the revolutionaries who made this country what it is, but their significance and their righteousness are treated as foregone conclusions. Far less consideration is given to questions of whose revolutions are treated as worthwhile and legitimate, and how and why we came to see them that way, and that’s where Hamilton sets its sights.

It is, of course, possible to quibble with how Hamilton chooses to engage in those conversations — to argue over whether it’s too enamored of the Founding Fathers, too disinterested in its female characters, too naive or too timid in vision of a more inclusive America. But the show does effectively connect the revolutionary spirit of the 18th century with the one that flooded the streets in protest of Michael Brown’s murder the year before Hamilton hit Broadway, and fills them now in objection to police brutality and white supremacy.

Actually seeing Black and brown faces on the screen, fighting back against their oppressors (played here by white actors, like Jonathan Groff as King George III) and being hailed as heroes for it, packs a punch in a way that merely listening to a cast album or leafing through a Playbill can’t. And though the unpredictable crackle of live performance is inevitably lost en route to the small screen, putting Hamilton on a streaming service makes the experience more accessible than ever before to people who might not have the ability or willingness to catch a stage production. 

Revisiting Hamilton now, with the benefit of distance, it becomes more possible to see both its flaws and its strengths. (Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say it becomes possible to see them again, since they were always there and always noticed, but tended to get flattened into rants that painted Hamilton as the best thing ever or the worst.) I’d forgotten, for instance, the extent to which Angelica, one of the most compelling characters in Act I, is sidelined in Act II, and I’m not sure I had ever fully realized how close Miranda comes to being overshadowed by the even more ferociously charismatic Odom. 

However, I had not misremembered Hamilton‘s irresistible pull, the way it grips you in the first number and doesn’t let go until the last. I didn’t feel the electric shock of discovery that went through me the first time I listened to the album; this musical is by now, a familiar tune for me. But just as Hamilton strips away the legend to show us the man, Hamilton on streaming, five years removed from the fanfare of its Broadway debut, reveals once again the brilliance at its core — and confirms it as foundational myth worth treasuring time and time again. 

Hamilton is available to stream on Disney+ starting July 3.