Hamilton: an all-round crowd pleaser and nothing more

I went to see Hamilton on the west end in London recently and thoroughly enjoyed it. I'd seen the recording on Disney plus which got me into it, and I was very familiar with the brilliant and musically-diverse soundtrack. But it's something you have to see live to truly appreciate how amazing and groundbreaking it is, not to mention that the performance of Hamilton himself (Scottish newcomer Reuben Joseph) was brilliant, far better than the not-so-brilliant-but-we'll-allow-it-cos-he-wrote it performance of Lin-Manuel Miranda.

It's a great musical that tells the story of America's foundation through the lens of a man who's story is pretty interesting and doesn't get told enough. It was good to watch and I learnt a lot from it too. But lots of people seem, as people always feel the need to these days, find issue with it. The main target of the musical's criticism tends to be its casting choices, whereby the majority of the cast are portrayed by ethnic minorities, turning history on its head as the majority of the historical figures were white (this is not strictly 100% true, I am told - in the theatre world of understudies etc., there have been white Hamiltons).

Now, many right-wing critics seem to have issue with this as being hypocritical - why is it racist for a white actor to portray a black character in blackface but not the other way around? (I'll get to the lunacy of this claim in a second), but it also gets stick from people on the far-left for not being diverse enough, or for glorifying the foundation of America on slavery (i.e. the 1619 Project).

I think both of these criticisms miss the point entirely. It was a deliberate choice by Miranda but not in the way some people think. He didn't decide to have a musical with colourblind casting and deliberately give preference to ethnic minority actors. He did, it, I'm pretty sure, for several clear reasons.

First of all, I need to address how ridiculous the idea of colourblind casting is when people promote it and see Hamilton as being hypocritical. Why on Earth would you have an actor in blackface portray a historical figure who was black when a black actor could play the part??!! Of course blackface in film is racist. It couldn't be a more clear definition of racism in my eyes. Yes, sometimes colourblind casting makes sense. If a character's race isn't important, why does it matter who plays them? Of course this isn't always the case, but I find it ludicrous that people scoffed at the idea of James Bond being played by Idris Elba. I don't think it's going to happen, but Elba would've been a great James Bond. The colour of the character's skin is totally irrelevant.

Now, these critics are missing the point when it comes to Hamilton. It isn't "political correctness gone mad," it's Miranda making a deliberate point about what it means to be American. The musical is about the founding fathers. The country was founded on values. Hamilton himself was an immigrant. They had a vision for a country where you can achieve anything. The American dream as we know it today. 'American' is not a race, and that's the point. These men are as much the forefathers to African-Americans or Asian-Americans as they are to White Americans.

I believe Miranda got the idea when he decided to incorporate rap music into Hamilton's story, as it reminded him of rap's many rags-to-riches stories, which are a fundamentally American concept, and, although founded by Black America, is also not racially exclusive ('My shot' is reminiscent of Eminem's 'Lose yourself').

I saw a video of two conservatives debating the musical. Italian-American Michael Knowles claimed that the musical is anti-white because the primary villain (George III) is the only character portrayed by a white man, who sings show-tune songs, and so it's claiming that white people are oppressors to the rest of the cast, who rap. I think this is just not true at all, and completely over-thinking it in a way that Knowles often accuses others of doing. George III is not an American character, and (Unlike Frenchman Lafayette, who buys into the American concept) it therefore makes sense for him to be portrayed by a white man, because he was a white man. Similarly, the songs he sings are just trying to symbolise the musical 'British invasion' of the 1960s.

I prefer the opinions of his friend, Jewish-American Andrew Klavan, who said he enjoyed it, and that it showed that anyone can be American if they commit to it. Maybe that's the case. Maybe it's not that deep. It's just a very clever, very creative musical that is literally, as its writer Lin-Manuel Miranda put it 'America then, as told by America now.'