@prismaticvoid that's really neat! I kind of pride myself on being able to recognize people's voices but delivery and accents completely threw me off here.
I know, right? It took me forever to realize Okieriete Onaodowan was Madison too, his voice is so different!
The whole cast is really stupidly talented. I bet that's gonna be one of those musicals that anything other than the original cast is going to sound weird.
-flops- so i ship historical figures now seriously though, what an amazing musical. the writing is amazing. I have to admit, because of school shenanigans I managed to avoid being taught US History past... 7th? grade. So my knowledge of american history is veryyy rusty so when Burr says he shot Hamilton in the opening song I was like 'wow spoilers' for a second.
I discovered Hamilton in about... november I think? And I swear to god thanks to it I managed to go for about three months straight without slipping into suicidal ideation because the whole musical is about people trying to do something with their lives and it manages to carry out the message so well that whenever I'm having a really bad time, there's a voice saying "you have to at least try to do something with your life" in a place where there was nothing but despair before? Oops I rambled but this musical means so much to me and I. needed to say it somewhere.
miiildly obsessed with the part in "take a break" where Eliza and Angelica are so, so happy to see each other..... it makes my heart hurt, I love love love it when sisters love each other. that is the one thing guaranteed to fuck me up, when it comes to sibling relationships. everyone can keep their rivalries and their competitiveness, give me sisters who would do anything for each other and adore each other.......... "I know my sister like I know my own mind, you will never find anyone as trusting or as kind. I love my sister more than anything in this life; I will put her happiness over mine every time." I LOVE THE SCHUYLER SISTERS......
I've finally listened through the thing, and I rather like it. Lyrically it's brilliant. I'm not sure how many times I've looped Wait For It, but it's a lot of times. I don't think I've ever seen a musical OST this long. 20-30 tracks is pretty typical, but 46 is out of the norm. That's more of an opera amount of music to text, unless this play is absurdly long on stage? Which, it may well be. How would I know?
It doesn't have any dialogue that isn't in the songs, is the thing. Except for one scene. But everything else is just back-to-back the songs on the soundtrack, so it's basically as long as the soundtrack is.
I was starting to suspect that, since they do a lot of explanation inside of the songs. I was thinking 'a few spoken scenes, but not many' but just one? Really? When in the show?.... They do a lot of in-song explanation, but that much?... I felt like I was losing a little context listening to it but it was probably mostly visual context.
The one scene is.. just after Dear Theodosia, I think? Hamilton receives a letter informing him of Laurens' death, everybody is sad, he says "I have so much work to do." Yeah, you really get an unusual amount of the Show Experience or whatever just from listening to it, which makes me happy :D
Definitely. I used to listen to musical osts all the time and I remember like, suffering through the Wicked soundtrack when that blew up, trying to figure out what plot points had happened in-between the songs, or trying to figure out what the hell guys and dolls was about through just hearing tracks of it played... Hamilton was much less baffling to listen through. There were very few times I said 'wait, remind me?'
I think the only thing you're missing without visuals is an easier way of telling who's speaking and maybe some of the double casting references
this is look-up-able, but for ease of reference, here is the double casting: lafayette->jefferson laurens->phillip mulligan->madison peggy-> maria reynolds and also the ensemble guy who plays james reynolds also plays Eliza's dad, W E L P
I was just thinking about ow Peggy is such an unfortunate roll, because the other sisters necessarily have large parts but it would be shoving too much into the musical to talk about the minutiae of a woman who clearly didn't play a huge roll in the actual events of the story. Shame. And despite spending so much time in the theater I forgot double casting was a thing, so that's nice, because Maria is clearly a fun as hell part to play. Who is this wizard who can sound both like Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson?... I mean that's a trick question I know who he is but WOW. (I'm going on three days, maybe four, hard to tell, of having Wait For It stuck in my head. Further bulletins as events warrant.)
Someone in, I think, the Gravity Falls thread in this very forum linked a "Room Where It Happens" amv and as it turns out I'm a sucker for jazzy sinister showtunes. So after listening to that on repeat for the better part of a week I decided to see what the hell else came out of this "Hamilton" thing that everyone was excited about. Turns out it's great. Also major props for it making US history amazing. Like, I don't even give a crap about Canadian history, and I live there.
introduced-to-hamilton-through-gravity-falls-amvs high-five! and seconding you on canadian history! :D
I broke when Amber sent me a video of Bill Cipher singing What Comes Next So that's officially a recognized social phenomenon
Long story short, I was trying to find out if the 'itemized list of thirty years of disagreements' that A. Ham references in Your Obedient Servant is real, discovered that wikisource furnishes the Hamilton-Burr pre-duel letters for us, and discovered no itemized list that I can see but a renewal of my love for Old Time Shade. "Your letter of the 20th inst. has been this day received. Having considered it attentively, I regret to find in it nothing of that sincerity and delicacy which you profess to value." Burr.
i think the 'itemized list' is referencing this: "Repeating that I can not reconcile it with propriety to make the acknowledgment or denial you desire, I will add that I deem it inadmissible on principle, to consent to be interrogated as to the justness of the inferences which may be drawn by others, from whatever I may have said of a political opponent in the course of a fifteen years competition." like... the entire letter is just a really long way of saying "listen, you really need to specify which particular despicable thing i've said about you because, let's be real, i've talked a lot of shit. i've been talking shit for fifteen years, so i'm gonna need a time and date of this precise instance of shit-talking." hamilton...... you are the worst....
