We saw the touring company of Hamilton at the Pantages last night in Hollywood. We had seen the original production when we were in New York in the fall of 2015 and this was staged on a slightly reduced scale. (For instance, while I remember two concentric turntables on stage rotating in opposite directions for the original production, I'm pretty sure this only had one, rotating counterclockwise when I was aware of it, though we were so close to the stage this time that the turntables weren't visible the way they were last time from the mezzanine.)
I think I enjoyed it more this time than the first, though that's partly because I know the show better now. Some of the players had done the New York production at one time or another and if I had my program handy I'd tell you which ones. The understudy was in the title role and his bio in the program was sparse, but he was excellent and I honestly think I preferred him to Lin-Manuel Miranda. The actor who played King George had done the role at some point in New York and chewed the scenery hilariously. And the actor in the Burr role was superb.
My appreciation of the show, its score and its consistently ingenious staging (which despite the slightly reduced scope was essentially the same as in New York), has only grown and I'm listening to the score again on my Echo.
Probably because the crowd was younger than typical for a musical and because the album has become such a phenomenon, there was more of a rock concert feel in the house than when we first saw it, with screaming when the actors came out, though this died down as the show went on.
How long is the touring production in L.A.? How difficult was it to get tickets? (Trying to judge this against how long it's going to be here.)
We got the Pantages season last year just so we could get first crack at seats. There were 7 shows including Hamilton. We had no interest in seeing three of them and sold those tickets on stub hub for roughly face value.
The section we were in, which we upgraded to when ticket exchanges became available for subscribers, were priced at $650 each when they went on sale to the general public. We paid $200 each.
It opened August 11 and runs to December 30.
@KathyB - There's an online Hamilton lottery for LA, Chicago and New York that you can enter every day or two for the city or cities of your choice. The downside is that you'll get only one or two days warning before the show, so you'd better be prepared to book a quick flight. Amy and I have been entering it through the iPhone Hamilton app.
One thing that struck me about seeing it from the orchestra rather than the mezzanine is that I gained a new (not better, but different) appreciation of the blocking and choreography. In New York, we had terrific seats in the second row of the mezzanine, which at the Richard Rodgers thrusts out so far over the orchestra that we had a closer view of the actors than the majority of people below. We got what I think of as the Busby-Berkeley view of the choreography and could appreciate the byzantine complexity of the movements. From our orchestra seats this time around the blocking and choreography formed more of a series of tableaus, with six (I think) muscular dancers of both sexes forming living, writhing statues in a constantly changing piece of sculpture. It was beautiful -- from both positions.
The touring company of Hamilton will be in Denver for about six weeks. Tickets for first-run touring shows are notoriously difficult to get here unless you get season tickets to the touring package (called Center Attractions here). Which sounds kind of similar to what Amy described, except it'll be in L.A. for four months instead of six weeks.
Yowza, though--$650 for a ticket. My entire season of the Denver Center Theatre Company (not Center Attractions) was $500.
Quote from: KathyB on Sep 25, 2017, 04:24 PMYowza, though--$650 for a ticket. My entire season of the Denver Center Theatre Company (not Center Attractions) was $500.
Welcome, metaphorically, to LA, though I suspect that Hamilton is overpriced even for here.
Amy was very clever to get us the seats we got at the rates we got and still feels like she may have gotten away with something she shouldn't have. (But they let us in, honey, so I think your plan was brilliant!)
I'm still listening to Hamilton and it hit me during "The Room Where It Happens": This show is structured as The Tragedy of Aaron Burr. (Much the same way Jesus Christ Superstar is structured as The Tragedy of Judas Iscariot.)
I think this is really what gives the show its power, much the same way that structure gave JCSS its power
I just took a look on Ticketmaster to see if they were sold out. There are still a smattering of seats in that front center section on weeknight shows and they are priced at $338. The weekends are all sold out though
ETA: That's weird. I just went back in and the front center are $650. I must have been mistaken. It's a crazy price but I guess they are getting it. There aren't that many seats left at that price. I would not pay that to see anything.
I guess this all puts my moaning about the prices for the 2018 Company in perspective; I can't be bothered to look but I wonder what the London Hamilton tix are priced?
Quote from: Gordonb on Sep 26, 2017, 05:56 AMI can't be bothered to look but I wonder what the London Hamilton tix are priced?
I bothered to look for you. £37.50, £57.50 or £89.50, Premium Tickets are £137.50 and £200. So the £200 is probably the equivalent of our $650 seats, so a better deal by far based on today's exchange rate. That being said, the first batch of tickets for London Hamilton are completely sold out and subsequent batches have yet to be released. There are still a few seats to be had at that crazy price here in Los Angeles.
Quote from: KathyB on Sep 25, 2017, 04:24 PMThe touring company of Hamilton will be in Denver for about six weeks. Tickets for first-run touring shows are notoriously difficult to get here unless you get season tickets to the touring package (called Center Attractions here). Which sounds kind of similar to what Amy described, except it'll be in L.A. for four months instead of six weeks.
Yowza, though--$650 for a ticket. My entire season of the Denver Center Theatre Company (not Center Attractions) was $500.
Our entire season for the Pantages (7 shows) was about $635 per person. We upgraded Hamilton for $100 each to get into that premium ($650) section. I really gamed the system, it would seem.
Thanks Amy - I am not bothered about seeing it anyway. I've tried listening to the OBCR but it just isn't doing anything for me. Maybe I'll have another try tomorrow in the hammock, cos once I'm in that thing I am not getting out of it in a hurry!
Maybe that hammock will help you appreciate it more. :) I liked it from listening the OBCR but many who didn't like it just listening to it loved it once they saw it. I'm sure it will be in London for years and years so you have plenty of time to decide whether to see it. We only got a tour. London, like Chicago and of course New York, have open-ended runs.
Yeah, it helps to see it. It's as much a dance (and even mime) piece as a musical, and it's not always easy to grasp the context of the action simply from the lyrics.
There was a tv programme recently profiling Cameron Mackintosh; he has totally gutted and refurbished the Victoria Palace theatre at great expense and it does seem like it will be a tremendous production, and let's face it he knows his musicals. But still ...meh
Quote from: Gordonb on Sep 26, 2017, 11:28 AMThere was a tv programme recently profiling Cameron Mackintosh; he has totally gutted and refurbished the Victoria Palace theatre at great expense and it does seem like it will be a tremendous production, and let's face it he knows his musicals. But still ...meh
I hope you're not doing what I do with OBCs: listening to it from the start over and over without finishing it. Because a lot of the best songs, like "The Room Where It Happens" and "Washington on Your Side" come later (though the lyrics consistently build on what comes earlier, with repetitions of both lyrics and musical themes woven throughout). It's a denser score than it seems at first, very tightly packed with internal cross references.
More thoughts on Burr as the tragic hero of Hamilton and the resemblance to JCSS:The tip-off that Burr is the tragic hero comes right at the beginning, when the opening number, "Alexander Hamilton," is introduced by Burr and climaxes (though doesn't quite end) at his line: "And I'm the damned fool who shot him." Similarly, JCSS opens with "Heaven on Their Minds," sung by Judas, who keeps repeating, "Please remember that I want us to live." Ultimately, both Christ and Judas end up dead.Over on Facebook, both @AmyG and @Jenniferlillian think the resemblance between the shows is deliberate, which is quite possible.
Thanks for your astute observations about the staging,
@Chris L ! I'm afraid I somehow hadn't read them before now, but they made me reconsider it in at least one important new way.
Hamilton is chockablock with inspirations drawn from other musicals, and I'm 99% sure Miranda addresses the
JCS/framed-by-the-antagonist connection in
Hamilton: The Revolution (https://www.amazon.com/Hamilton-Revolution-Lin-Manuel-Miranda/dp/1455539740/) -- that similarity certainly struck me the first time I heard the opening number.
He also mentions
Les Miz more than once, which, again, came as no surprise: "The Story of Tonight" basically
is "Drink With Me," one could argue that "Hurricane" is
Hamilton's "Javert's Suicide" (A.Ham's
career suicide as a statesman, if you will, featuring some distinct dramaturgical and staging similarities to the death of Javert) -- and hey: late-18th/early-19th-century revolutions, recapped in through-sung, contemporaryish, more- or less-pointedly un-"period"-sounding scores. (Both are also adapted from doorstops, and both are consequently shaped in large part by the need to compress huge amounts of narrative information into a reasonable running time -- a little under three hours each).
The original
production's primary debt to
Les Miz is its set design and its particular use of the turntable(s) -- not so much to move or reveal scenery as to sculpt ever-changing tableaux of actors (and occasionally a bit of furniture, though no actual barricades). Indeed, this basic staging strategy, set within a cavernous surround of weathered Colonial-era brick and timber, so dominated my impression of
Hamilton on Broadway that I wasn't always sure the unavoidable comparisons to the Nunn/Napier
Les Miz were doing Kail and Korins any great favors. To anyone who hadn't seen the prototype, it was undoubtedly dazzling; to anyone who had, it all looked startlingly familiar.
But I hadn't deeply considered -- as you did very perceptively in your post -- the impact of Blankenbuhler's choreography. (
Les Miz has, by contrast, no dancing to speak of, apart from the ball late in Act II). I've only seen
Hamilton once, from the orchestra, but I did leave thinking that next time (and there will undoubtedly be a next time) I'd like to sit in the mezzanine. I also need to give Howell Binkley's lighting another chance; on a first viewing it seemed to me to be overcompensating, sometimes quite gaudily indeed, for the set's deliberate spareness -- but seeing it again might soften that impression.
Perhaps I'll consider October 15, 2021 (https://variety.com/2020/film/news/hamilton-movie-lin-manuel-miranda-2-1203490645/) my deadline for checking it out again in the flesh.
Also, re: great songs that occur later in Hamilton's score: "Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)" is a pretty amazing sequence (https://youtu.be/b5VqyCQV1Tg?t=186). "One Last Time" easily earns its frequent use (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wYwA2LRShQ) for "special appearances" and events (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV4UpCq2azs). "It's Quiet Uptown" guts me every time. And the show's final ten minutes -- from the Hamilton/Burr duel onward -- are as brilliantly constructed and as moving as any I've seen since
SITPWG (which, for me, is saying quite a lot). And all are, as you mention, beautifully woven into the fabric of the score, with echoes and cross-references elsewhere.