Hamilton (an opera review post, part two)

"Ladies and gentlemen, you coulda been anywhere in the world tonight!
"But you're here...!"

Okay, maybe you couldn't have been anywhere, and maybe you're not here -- actually, looking around me, I know that you're not -- but you get the message, I'm sure.
Or, at least, I hope you do.

As I said last post, we in my family were kind of early adopters of the whole Hamilton thing. Christmas of 2015 was full of Hamilton merchandise, and we hadn't done more than listen to it online before that. A lot. Seriously. A LOT. But after Christmas, there were CDs and, then, the music went everywhere with us. I did mention, didn't I (last post), that 2/3 of my kids know the entire thing, basically, by heart. Actually, the 1/3 might also know it, but he tries to feign indifference to Hamilton. (It's complicated.)

At any rate, it's the kind of immersion that makes me wonder about the necessity of seeing the actual stage production.
Let me tell you a brief story:

Once upon a time, I had never been to Disneyland. When my extended family found out, they were amazed and dumbfounded and decided that had to change. But I'd been to Six Flags, many of them many many times, and didn't get the big deal. I mean, it's just a bigger amusement park, right? Boy, was I wrong about that. It's the difference between a McDonald's cheeseburger and the best hamburger you've ever had, unless a McDonald's cheeseburger is the best burger you've ever had, in which case I'm very sad for you.

Yes, what I'm saying is that the stage production is so worth seeing. It was... tremendous.

That said, there is one hangup I have with Lin-Manuel Miranda over Hamilton. It's a small hangup because the work is, overall, amazing, but it's still there, and I would definitely point it out in any other piece of work (and have). Miranda needlessly changes the history in a few places. I'm not talking about changes one might make to a story so that it would flow more smoothly or something; he just changes some facts here and there. Even though they're relatively "small" things, in this day and age, I think it's dangerous. For one thing, it gives people who want to detract from the larger Truth of the work an opening to do so. But, also, since people tend to not bother with knowing history stuff, it leads them to believe things that aren't true. You know 99% of people who have seen this had no idea who Alexander Hamilton was before they saw Hamilton. [Yes, I pulled that number out of my butt. It's a metaphor because I have no idea what the actual percentage is, but I know that it's very very high.]

Of course, he did write it before all of the fake news and alternative facts, so maybe he wouldn't do it that way again. It just happened that it exploded onto the scene and was quickly followed by the quasi-reality we're all living through right now.

Other than that, there's nothing bad I can say about Hamilton in general. It's a great opera. Even I know some of the songs. And seeing it live... well, it took it up another level.

For one thing, there are a few things you can't get from just listening to it, things I didn't really realize I hadn't gotten until I saw it. I didn't know I was missing stuff, because I was out of context from the action on the stage but, when you see the performance, the lyrics in places click into place and it's like, "Oh! That's what that means!" Plus, I don't have the best ear, so I can't always tell when I'm listening to it who is singing what in the pieces where there are a lot of singers telling different bits, like in the opening number, so, for me, it was really nice to be able to see who was singing what.

As you can see from the picture,

the stage was pretty impressive. There were rotating portions of the stage as well that produced some interesting effects at points as people were rotated in opposite directions or were able to walk without moving across the stage.

The cast was great, even Simon Longnight as Lafayette, at which point I didn't care for him because of the nasal pitch to his voice, but I wasn't sure if it was him I wasn't liking so much as the faux French accent for the character. In the second part of the production, he becomes Thomas Jefferson, and he was completely enjoyable as Jefferson, so it was the accent that was the issue in the first part. At any rate, that's the only part of the entire production I have any quibble with, and that's hardly even a thing.

Julia Harriman, as Eliza, was powerful powerful during "Burn." I was surprised at how powerful.

Donald Webber gave a similarly powerful performance of "Wait for It."

Isaiah Johnson was amazing as Washington, possibly the best in the case? I don't know. I have a hard time judging that kind of thing. Like I said, I don't have the best ear.

Rick Negron's calves stole the scene as King George, but he was still great. It's not his fault all of us (seriously, we all noticed) noticed the size of his calves. Also, I want to point out, there are parts of the production that contain George where he's not singing, so you never know until you see it. It was so awesome to see him dance around the stage during "The Reyonlds Pamphlet."

And, then, there's  Julius Thomas as Hamilton. He was amazing. I mean, probably not the best singer up there, but he has to carry the show, and he certainly did that. Also, he came out after the show and signed autographs and let people take selfies with him and was so gracious about all of it. Thanking people for being there and supporting the show while allowing them to take up his time when you know he has to be tired and wants to just go home already. I was super impressed.

Look, if you have the chance to go see Hamilton, you should do it. It's an amazing show with fabulous music, and it's playing in several venues across the U.S. and on tour as well. I know you might have to "Wait for It," we did, but it is well worth it. I want to go again.

Hamilton (an opera review post, part one)

Okay, let's talk about the elephant I just brought into the room: I called this an "opera review post." Why would I do such a thing when Hamilton is clearly not an opera.
Right?
I'm just gonna guess that you don't actually know what an opera is. You just have a vague cultural idea of opera as some snooty upper class thing full of boring classical music and languages you don't understand.
And, well, unfortunately, that's kind of what opera has become, but it's not what it actually is. Oh, and when I say "kind of" what it's become, I actually mean that's not at all what it's become, but I can understand why so many people think of that way: It's how I used to think of it, too.

So what is opera, then? And what makes it different from musical theater?
Or from a play?
Well, both opera and musical theater fit under the broader category of what a play is. We tend to think of plays as the things without music, but they're all plays. If you add a few songs (or more than a few) but the play still consists of mostly spoken dialogue, you get musical theater. If it's a completely sung work, it's an opera.
Don't look at me like that, I'm talking about definitions, here, and definitions are important.

Look at it like this:
When opera was the entertainment of the day, opera was not a snooty upper class thing. Opera was entertainment for the masses and full of popular music. Classical music wasn't written to be classical -- there was no such thing at the time -- it was written to be popular. It's only "classical" now because it has endured. That's how popular it was. You'd probably be surprised at how much of the music you'd recognize if you became an opera-goer. (Just sayin'.) This was Top 40 stuff, is all I'm sayin'.

Also, opera wasn't written in other languages to be inaccessible to people. They were written in the languages of the people watching them. So, you know, French and Italian, especially. Some German. Other languages, too, just not much English. Look, I don't know why the British didn't get into opera writing. If they had, maybe we'd have different ideas about opera these days, but they didn't. Probably something to do with their "stiff upper lip" personality thing. It's a mystery to me. What it means, though, is that all of the big, famous operas from the past are mostly French or Italian, which means that when we think of operas, we get this idea that they have to be written in some other language.

It's the Three Wise Men, okay. It's all assumptions with no facts to back it up.

Hamilton is a sung work. There's really nothing spoken in it. A line or two here or there for emphasis, if you want to get all technical about it, but one word spoken without music doesn't make it not a sung work, so don't try to go all musical theater on me. And, no, the line between opera and musical theater can be blurry, but it's not so blurry that it extends to a word or two.

Hamilton is full of popular music. It's very singable. I know, because 2/3 of my kids know the entire thing by heart. It's also in the language of the people, which I'm just gonna say again, older operas were not written in some special "opera language," they were written in the languages of the audiences and the composers. It's not surprising, then, that Hamilton is in English.

So, Hamilton is an opera, which means that if you've seen Hamilton or listened to Hamilton, you've been interacting with opera. If you enjoyed Hamilton, you're enjoying opera.
It's not my fault; I'm not making this stuff up.

It also means that Lin-Manuel Miranda is the most famous opera singer in America.

My family's involvement with Hamilton began in the fall of 2015. NPR did a piece about it which my wife heard on her way home from work. She came home and played a bit of it for me, sure that I wasn't going to like it. Hip-hop isn't exactly my style of music. She was astonished when I liked it and told her to let it play. Maybe it was that I already liked Alexander Hamilton and had thought since high school that he's kinda gotten the short end of the stick. Maybe the music is just that catchy. Maybe it was a double-full blue blood moon and the tides were both extremely high and non-existent. I suppose it doesn't really matter why, but I liked it and, because, at that moment, I told my wife to let it play so my daughter heard it and she liked it and, well, it just cascaded from there.

We were all very disappointed that it only won 11 Tony awards.

All of which is to say that we didn't just go see Hamilton because it was a thing to do and people talk about it a lot. It was a dream-fulfillment thing, especially for my daughter. And it was her birthday present, which we will probably never be able to top.

None of which has anything to do with the performance that we saw, but that will have to be next time...

Mary Poppins Returns (a movie review post)

Where even to begin with this one? I mean, Mary Poppins Returns should have been... Man, I hate going to sports analogies, but it should have been a grand slam. At least a home run. It's the kind of movie that parents should have been swarming to with their kids, not so much because their kids wanted to see it but because they wanted to see it. Mary Poppins is one of the most beloved of Disney characters and has been for decades. But, yet, it's been drowned out by Aquaman. Aquaman!

Which is not unjustified, as it turns out. Not that I've seen Aquaman (and probably won't bother to, either, or at least not in the theater), but Poppins never managed to rise above mediocre. And mediocre is very difficult at more than two hours.

So let's deal with the most glaring problem first: the music. In a word, boring. In two? Unmemorable. And to add insult to that: They had Lin-Manuel Miranda right there! He's in the freaking movie, man; use him for what he's really great at: writing music, not singing it. Which is not to say that he's not a fine singer, he is, but it's not his gift. When you have one of the greatest living song writers on hand, why would you settle for lackluster crap? It's a musical, for crying out loud, the music is the most important element. Come on, Disney, you're better than this!
Now I have to go listen to the Moana soundtrack so that I can experience a bit of what Poppins should have been like.

Moving on to the story, we fare no better. Stories in musicals tend to be a bit simpler than your general movie plots because you have to spend time on musical numbers rather than telling story, and that's okay... when the music is good, because the music should be carrying the story. But, when the music isn't great, you better have a solid story to fall back on. In Poppins, not so much. The plot is simple and predictable, predictable almost to the point of unbelievability.

Unbelievable in what ways? Well, the villain is the villain because he's the villain. He just likes to win. Or he doesn't like to lose. On of the two. He seems to have no motivation other than that. Every time they hint at anything beyond that, they back off of it and leave it at, "I must take all the houses from all the people!" And Colin Firth just isn't adept enough as an actor to pull any of this off.

Michael Banks is also completely unbelievable as the asshole father, something which is constantly undermined by the script. He gets mad at his kids and yells or whatever but breaks down in tears over it moments later. He's lost his wife and is losing his house as a result of his grief, so we can't even see him as incompetent, just vaguely hapless. It really destroys the dynamic of the first Poppins where Michael's father is an asshole. It's like the writers wanted to retain that dynamic in the household but couldn't bring themselves to have Michael have grown up to become an asshole. Which, granted, would have been hard to swallow, but it would also have been a great reason for Poppins to return, "Michael! I'm ashamed of what you've become!" But, no, instead they just kind of wallow around in being wishy-washy.

It makes the movie a mess.

Then there's Emily Mortimer, and I like Emily Mortimer, but her role is a mess, too. I'm blaming it more on the directing than on her, but she's constantly spunky and upbeat through the whole movie which makes the threat of losing the house seem like a non-threat. And you know that that's true, anyway, because you know that there's no way they're going to lose the house, but the viewer needs to believe that the characters believe that the threat is real and Mortimer's character more than any other undermines that tension.

So not only is the music boring, but the movie is too.

However, the animation sequences were beautiful.

And, actually, Emily Blunt was fantastic as Mary Poppins. So good in fact that I wish there was going to be another Mary Poppins movie just to see her return to the role; however, I doubt the box office will be good enough on this for Disney to want to risk another one anytime soon. Which is a shame because, like I said, this should have been an easy win for Disney rather than the snoozefest it turned into.

The Burr Advice

Obviously, I never knew Aaron Burr so never received any advice from him. I don't really know if he would have uttered the words, "Don't let them know what you're against or what you're for," or not. It doesn't really matter as it's the words I'm dealing with moreso than Burr. Well, moreso than Burr the historical figure. I'm definitely dealing with Burr, the character, from Hamilton.

That said, Burr was a despicable figure, a true scum-of-the-earth human being. And, for what it's worth, I'm willing to go along with Miranda's interpretation of him, on the whole, since it's based on Ron Chernow's book about Hamilton. I would say that Chernow is a more than reliable as a source.

The Burr of the Broadway musical is a conniving piece of trash, a man constantly playing the middle so that he can make sure he comes down on the winning side. A bit of historical curiosity for you: He's the politician who invented going door to door and getting out in the neighborhood, which was not exactly a good thing. He wanted to get people to vote for him because of how friendly he was, how personable he was, not because of what he stood for. He wanted it to be a popularity contest, something like running for class president in high school.

"Vote for me because we could buddies!"

When I was a kid, I was into GI Joe and Transformers. Mostly, I was into the toys, and I collected them and kept them on display in my room. One day, my mom was in my room talking to me about... something I don't remember... when she abruptly inserted, "I wish you didn't have all of these war toys." It was completely out of the blue and, while not exactly confusing, a little confusing.

So I said the logical thing, "Why?"

And she said, "Because if you were ever drafted, you wouldn't be able to tell them you're a pacifist."

Which totally blew my mind. I think I said something like, "Why would I want to tell them that?" I don't really believe in violence as an answer to things, but I'm also not a pacifist. It would never have occurred to me to try to lie to get out of being drafted like, you know, claiming to have bone spurs.

Which brings us back to this idea of keeping your political leanings out of your public life. Not that most of us have a "public" life but, as small as mine is, I do have a public life. The general "wisdom" among my "fellow writers" is that we should keep our politics and our personal beliefs out of our public lives. Rather in the same way that people are saying saying that football players should keep their protests out of sports.

Not that the two things are actually similar. People want football players to keep their mouths shut (or their knees unbent) just so that they don't have to think about what it's like to be African American in America. Writers tell other writers to keep their politics and beliefs to themselves because they'll alienate potential readers if they're open about what they believe.

And that's true. I know that I have lost followers since I started writing politics.

However! The trade off is keeping your mouth shut about the injustices in the world (or, if you're a Trump (#fakepresident) supporter, supporting and praising those injustices). You know why the Nazis succeeded in so much destruction? People kept their mouths shut. People played it safe. People tried not to draw attention to themselves. And you can pfft all you want at this being similar to a pre-WWII Germany, but you can only do that if you're ignorant of the history. Ignorant.

Look, here's the thing:
When I was a kid in school learning about World War II and the Nazis, everyone always said, "Oh, I would never have done that. I wouldn't have kept silent. I would have taken a stand. I would never never never have let anything like that happen or have been a part of it." Everyone said that. But we're in those days right now, the days when people need to stand up and protest fascism and racism and all of the abuses of the Trump (#fakepresident) administration.

Well, for good or ill, all of you out there keeping your mouth shut, we know which side of that equation you would have been on. And all of you out there supporting Trump (#fakepresident), we all know you would have been right in with the Nazi party.
Congratulations on that.

In the end, I'm with Hamilton, "I'd rather be divisive than indecisive; drop the niceties."
Seriously, the Republicans have moved all of this way past "civility." Don't fall for that trap. It's just meant to get you to let them do what they want to do without complaining about it.