By Lauren Hirth ’21
Contributing Writer
On July 3, Disney released the much-anticipated filmed version of the smash-hit musical “Hamilton” to its streaming platform Disney Plus. The film, originally slated for theatrical release on October 15, 2021, presents a live-capture version of the musical using footage from two original cast performances back in 2016.
While “Hamilton” received near-universal acclaim when it premiered at the Public Theater in 2015, fans and critics alike have since been more critical of the show’s depiction of the Founding Fathers as men of color and its erasure of American slavery. This comes, of course, in the midst of a national reckoning on racism and police brutality sparked by the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and many others at the hands of police.
Numerous protests following these deaths have included calls to remove statues of slaveholders like Thomas Jefferson who, in the musical, is played by biracial rapper Daveed Diggs. Disney also released two roundtable discussions with members of the cast and crew, “The Undefeated Presents: Hamilton In-Depth” with Kelley Carter and “Hamilton: History Has Its Eyes on You” with Robin Reed, that address the show’s racial politics as well as its connections to the Obama administration during its conception and the current Black Lives Matter movement.
Others, like Vox’s Aja Romano, argue that critical focus on Hamilton’s historicity misses its radical subversion of American history. The show, she argues, “is a postmodern metatextual piece of fanfic.” The “fanfic” quality of the stage show comes from its explicit historical revision, talking back to and taking ownership of the canon of American history by imagining an alternative history in which immigrants and people of color have always been “in the room where it happens.”
Many of the actors have echoed this sentiment, such as the aforementioned Diggs, who, during the Reed roundtable, said, “the fact that we were all here playing the founding fathers and mothers of this country implies a sort of ownership over our country’s history that I had never felt before.” In this sense, “Hamilton” has a lot more to say about the politics of the Obama years, when progressives were more optimistic about the power of diverse representation to lead to racial equality, then the politics of the Continental Congress.
Alongside these discussions, Hamilton was challenged with fitting in the small screen. Overall, the Hamilfilm does a great job of capturing the individual performances of its main cast. Director Thomas Kail treats fans to a close-up view of the stamina and verbal dexterity of the musical’s best rappers, Renée Elise Goldsberry (Angelica Schuyler) and Daveed Diggs (Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson). In addition, innovative cutting techniques in songs like “Alexander Hamilton” and “Satisfied” highlight many of the story’s emotional beats, creating a unique viewing experience somewhere between watching a movie and sitting in the theater for a live performance.
However, these innovations come at the cost of erasing the set, the dancers and many of the minor characters who watch the events of the story unfold from the upper levels of the stage. In the stage show, these features are crucial to establishing the musical’s alternative history and furthering its self-conscious commentary on who gets to write history and what that means for future generations of Americans. In doing so, the Hamilfilm highlights the contradiction at the center of its story: that a theatrical revolution ultimately praises the current economic and political system. Fans should expect to feel a newfound discomfort with the politics of the show in 2020 that they might not have experienced only five years ago.
In many ways, it is fitting how the story of “Hamilton” has changed in adaptation. The comfort that live theater provides in transporting audiences out of their day-to-day lives seems inappropriate considering the racial politics of 2020. Maybe, this year, instead of reimagining “the room where it happens,” it’s time to start knocking down walls and tearing up floorboards.