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My mother recently discovered the musical Hamilton, and fell directly in love. She is now reading the Chernow biography and has also become a Hamilton/Laurens truther to rival the most dedicated of what fandom had to offer in 2015.

As a result of her obsession and her magnanimity -- "I really need someone to see it with who cares! Your father's coming but he won't care!" -- I spent a brief time in Chicago this past weekend with my parents (they were there for a conference) seeing my first actual live production of the show.

- I was not super impressed with either our Hamilton or our Burr; they were both perfectly fine performers, but our Burr was missing the kind of self-mocking irony that Leslie Odom Jr. brings to the cast album that makes his Burr so compelling, and didn't have any other particularly interesting take on the role to make up for it
- our Hamilton did have an interesting take -- he seemed to be playing a less impulsive and more calculating Alexander, nakedly ambitious in a way that was verged on cruel; I didn't really get any genuine feeling from him until "It's Quiet Uptown" -- but, uh, I didn't like it
- that said our Laurens | Philip was MAGNETIC, and I don't know if that's just that the actor was fantastic, or that the staging for Laurens draws the eye much more than that role does on the cast album, or a combination of both (no shade to Anthony Ramos, but when he's in a vocal crowd with Daveed Diggs and Okieriete Onaodowan I just don't end up paying him that much attention)
- (it could also just have been that I was primed to pay attention to Laurens by my mother peppering our pre-show dinner with paragraphs of the Hamilton-Laurens correspondence in order to demonstrate that there was no possible heterosexual explanation)
- my impression that Hercules Mulligan | Madison is the role that demands the most interesting demonstration of range from a performer remains confirmed
- I'd seen pictures of the set enough that I don't have a huge takeaway from it but the costuming, and the way it changed in accordance with the historical fashions, made a much bigger impression on me; something about the way it emphasizes the years disappearing in the back half of the show
- some small staging moments that were surprising or impactful to me:
- Lafayette hilariously steering Burr away to distract during "Farmer Refuted"
- the rewind staging on "Satisfied"; one of the most impressive bits of blocking I've seen onstage in a long time
- the bullet that misses Alexander in the first half of the show
- the staging of Jefferson above a bunch of Monticello slaves on the line "I can't believe that we are free"
- Madison irritably coming in halfway through "Washington On Your Side"
- King George hanging around to popcorn.gif after The Adams Administration and up through the Reynolds Pamphlet, which I think I had heard about but was beautiful to experience nonetheless
- "can we get back to politics?" "please" - I always heard that line on the cast album as exasperated, but MADISON IS CRYING, THAT'S ADORABLE

Overall: it was of course a good experience, but not transformative! I don't know if it would have been had I seen the original production four years ago, or not listened to the soundtrack often enough at this point that I had plenty of strong opinions and expectations already.

Side note: this was also my father's first time encountering Hamilton as anything other than the occasional song my mom played in the car. His opinion: "I wish there had been more about Philip Schuyler. I was really curious about that guy."

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The London show definitely ships Laurens & Hamilton. When they leave the stage at the end of "The Story of Tonight", there's a very AND NOW KISS vibe. I'm curious if that was the case for Chicago too (i.e. standard or local interpretation).

The Chicago show definitely doesn't ship them as much as that; I was very primed to look for it and I was disappointed!

I saw the show twice and never noticed the bullet that misses Alexander in the first half! And oh gosh that rewind staging for "Satisfied" is so good. I am happy for your mother and I welcome her to this fandom!

It really does look like a video effect that's somehow been translated onto stage, with real people -- well done to the entire chorus who pulled it off, because dang.

I TOO am very excited for her, she's got so many years of back fandom output to trawl through!

I saw the touring production of Hamilton when it came to DC and, honestly, I assumed it was going to be good but ultimately overhyped, so I was thrilled to find out that it actually was as incredible as everyone says it was!!! And yeah, the staging for "Satisfied" was incredible!!!!!!!!

I missed it when it came to Boston and had just assumed that was going to be my last opportunity for several years, so I was very stoked to have one suddenly fall in my lap!

Your mom is too hilarious and cute. I love it when family gets into fandoms.

She's also fallen right into a Good Omens obsession, which is maybe the only time she's been in the zeitgeist at the actual time the zeitgeist is happening, and it's really charming.

from listening to the cast album, I preferred act one. Seeing it, act two is stronger.

Agreed! I didn't at all expect to like Act Two better, but -- in this performance, at least -- all the emotion in the show really came to the fore in the last couple of songs in a way that really worked.

So cool to hear about! World-shifting or not, I'm glad it was a good experience and that you got to see it!

Me too! I'd seen so many bits and pieces in Tony performances and gifsets etc. but it was definitely a different and better experience to see the whole thing live and in context.

I had always meant to get out to Chicago to see that production before it closed, but I never quite found the time. I'm hoping to catch it again somewhere--New York or London are actually more feasible than the touring productions at this point (!).

I was so, so impressed by the staging when I saw it in New York--that was my main takeaway of the difference between that and the album, since I caught the original cast.

Your parents' reactions are both equally adorable.

I am really curious how long it's going to be before we get someone's completely different staging of the show, and what that might look like. I expect in ten years or so we'll see something really fascinating! (Or -- equally possible -- really terrible.)

(Or -- equally possible -- really terrible.)

What really terrible interpretations of beloved shows have you encountered?

(Curiosity, not challenge: I have occasionally seen productions of musicals that did not thrill me, but outside of opera never anything that ran so counter to the text I thought it had missed the point with maps and flashlights. Within opera, oh, man. You can have all the giant puppets you want in the first act of Les contes d'Hoffmann, but there is no need for them all over the rest of the show.)

*jumps in* I haven't actually seen it, and for all I know it was better than it sounded, but I was told of a local amateur production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience with a modern setting in which instead of rival aesthetes and heavy dragoons, Bunthorne and Grosvenor were rival gym owners (I don't know what the dragoons were) and Lady Jane performed 'Silvered is the raven hair' from an exercise bike. I just. Whut.

And then there was Jon English's Pirates of Penzance back in 97 or 98, about which all I can remember is my stunned disbelief that anyone might any point have considered Jon English to be sexually attractive, and that he 'ad-libbed' (in scare-quotes because I don't know what to call it if it's not in the script but he's obviously doing the same thing every night) telling the Major-General that he did hope none of his daughters were thespians (wink wink, see how he's just joking about how everyone on stage is an actor, it's totally not a lesbian joke! don't be so uptight!) and sitting through the rest of it in a fog of rage. (I was touchy about G&S at seventeen.)

Bunthorne and Grosvenor were rival gym owners (I don't know what the dragoons were) and Lady Jane performed 'Silvered is the raven hair' from an exercise bike.

Okay, someone was very impressed by Peter Sellars.

(I was touchy about G&S at seventeen.)

It happens!

I think my benchmark for personally experienced WTF staging is still the production of Halévy's La Juive that I saw with friends at the Met in 2003. We agreed afterward that we could not blame the creative team for the fact that Neil Shicoff's bronchitis got the upper hand at the intermission and he dropped out right before "Rachel, quand du seigneur," leaving the last act and a half to be performed by his understudy whose fault it wasn't either that he was shortish and round where Shicoff was tallish and thin; that was just bad timing. We definitely blamed the creative team for the set, however, since it was ultra-modernist abstract black-and-white and so steeply raked that we unironically worried about the singers losing their footing and ending up in the orchestra. The conceit of blocking the Gentiles above and the Jews below was obviously intended as a societal metaphor but in practice actually suggested that Eléazar's family was living in the basement of the imperial palace and everyone was just too polite to say so. The costuming jettisoned fifteenth-century Konstanz in favor of Nazi Germany complete with yellow Jude stars—but also eighteenth-century Austrian guardsmen for some reason—and we could find no other way to interpret the finale except that the Jewish maiden of the title was murdered by Klansmen in a pot of stoplights. On the bright side, it gave us something to talk about on the train back to New Haven. And occasionally still today.

Honestly, I can't think of any really genuinely horrible ones at the moment -- most of the perplexing staging choices I've seen have involved Shakespeare rather than musicals -- but with something as iconic and intentional as Hamilton, it's easy to imagine how an attempt to do something like the recent Dallas modernized staging of Les Mis could go horribly awry.

an attempt to do something like the recent Dallas modernized staging of Les Mis could go horribly awry.

I hadn't even heard of this! Will look up.

I heard about King George hanging around, and I almost imagined him literally eating popcorn xD

While there is technically no literal popcorn, he kicks back and does these absurd little dances of glee and it's genuinely beautiful.

- King George hanging around to popcorn.gif after The Adams Administration and up through the Reynolds Pamphlet, which I think I had heard about but was beautiful to experience nonetheless

I had not heard about that.

He sings the line "Jesus Christ, this will be fun" and then just SITS DOWN EXPECTANTLY TO WATCH, the most delighted member of the audience by far.

That does sound delightful.

the rewind staging on "Satisfied"; one of the most impressive bits of blocking I've seen onstage in a long time

SO AMAZING

King George hanging around to popcorn.gif after The Adams Administration and up through the Reynolds Pamphlet, which I think I had heard about but was beautiful to experience nonetheless

Haha amazing!! Definitely don't do that in the London show and now I'm sad.

- "can we get back to politics?" "please" - I always heard that line on the cast album as exasperated, but MADISON IS CRYING, THAT'S ADORABLE

Omg </3

I have not seen Hamilton (and I suspect that I spent so long thinking about the soundtrack that I would have to do some serious mental work to push all that out of the way and appreciate what was actually in front of me, if I did see it), but now I would really like to know when and why my ears/brain decided that Madison was crying on "can we get back to politics / please"! Because I definitely remember thinking that he was as annoyed as Jefferson, and then one day I stopped thinking that, but I can no longer remember why. Eh, brains are weird.

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