Birmingham Hippodrome – until Saturday 31st August 2024
Reviewed by Nadia Dodd
5*****
Birmingham are you in for a treat ….. 10 weeks to catch this fast paced, non-stop from start to finish production.
Shaq Taylor has been cast as Alexander Hamilton, one of America’s founding fathers. The story follows Hamilton from the age of 19 years, an immigrant from the West Indies, onto becoming George Washington’s right-hand man (Charles Simmons) during the Revolutionary War and then becoming the new nations first Treasury Secretary. All music and lyrics are by Lin-Manuel Miranda which have been inspired by the book Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow.
I saw Shaq last as the Beast, from Beauty and the Beast and you can see why he has been given this amazing opportunity to play the lead in the first UK and Ireland tour of the show. Hamilton is such a challenging in-depth male role in musical theatre.
The show follows his marriage to Elizabeth “Eliza” Schuyler, played by the gorgeous Maya Britto his flirtatious and possibly romantic friendship with her sister Angelica, (Aisha Jawando) his years-long political rivalries with Aaron Burr (Sam Oladeinde) and Thomas Jefferson, (Billy Nevers) America’s first political sex scandal, and much more, Hamilton charts the extraordinary rise and fall of perhaps America’s least well-known founding father.
There are battle scenes as part of the revolutionary war story, but they are not graphic and are mostly told through stylised movement, narration, and some sound effects. The rotating area of the stage also helps with the stylised movement, the ensemble work hard telling the story through dance and also moving any additional props required for that particular scene.
The music was captivating, my favourite being ‘The Room Where it Happens’ which is still in my head as I type this. King George played by Daniel Boys, just brilliant. So funny and such a camp comedic role that he made his own, the audience loved him. The show went from serious, funny to extremely emotional sensitive scenes, linking with ease.
I believe the show’s success has many factors. Diverse casting, with people of colour in almost all of the leading roles, marrying rap and hip-hop with more traditional musical theatre styles creates an entirely new sound unlike anything that has hit the stage before. It’s emotional, it’s political, it’s an epic story about a fascinating man… and on top of all that, it’s just spectacularly entertaining.