I think Hamilton is in the same category as RENT, quality wise.
Reasonably entertaining, here and there a catchy tune and an emotional moment, but overall too many characters to really care for them, and too flawed to be called a "good" show. Cliche's in staging and storytelling, inconsistent, leaning towards musical parody (show title/character sung 40 times to make clear what the show is about), head flip on last chord, people standing in row singing to the audience, messed up balance between the storytelling in acting and singing, lack of sincerity, songs that feel forced and very annoyingly composed sequences in between scenes. (tune up#1, christmas bells, lots of that in Hamilton too). Funny comedic song in the middle by random unknown character, jumping from 1 style to the other. I do have to say that RENT understands the balance between sung thoughts and sung dialogue a bit more, Hamilton is all over the place. In the music, every now and then there is a line that leans towards being beautiful, but then quickly cut off for some generic noise. (for example, mimi in another day singing a beautiful line, quickly cut off by roger "excuse me, if I'm on crack", in Hamilton, most of Eliza's lines are cut off with generic noise too). It never gets really beautiful in both shows. That's not the end of the world per se, if we could have emotional connections with all characters, so at least that would keep me invested. But in both shows there's just too many characters with random one liners or songs. At the end, of course, a preach song to the audience (or life is yours to miss/who tells your story), to speak to the audience in a way too literal manner, extremely cliche.
Updated On: 12/17/18 at 10:57 AM