Of Story and Faith

Last year my daughter sheepishly admitted that she was obsessed with a particular musical.  She said she was challenged by her friends not to talk about it for a period of time, and so she was trying to not even tell me what it was.  As it turns out it was Hamilton, which at that time was the biggest thing on Broadway. This summer, for her thirteenth birthday, we got her tickets to see Hamilton, at the Kennedy Center here in D.C. It was rather a stretch, because such things don't come cheap, and I am no fan of musicals in general. We could only afford two tickets, and because I'm the one who knows how to drive in D.C. traffic (no small challenge), I got to take my little girl to see something that has become a very important feature in her life.
I prepared myself by considering all of my peers who seem to have been forced into attending Taylor Swift concerts (or worse) to appease the infatuations of their tweens and teens, and I figured that Hamilton would probably prove much more bearable than any of that.  As it turns out I had rather underestimated the discernment that my daughter is capable of at this tender age.  I should have probably guessed that a child whose favorite song as a four year old was The Pixies Where Is My Mind? might just, as a new teenager, not just go in for any old junk, but people have been gaga over musicals like West Side Story and Grease in my presence before, and quite frankly, I'm not a fan.
However, I neglected two rather important things going into last night's performance. First, that it was a performance, not a movie.  It has been a while since I have seen a production like that on stage, with professional actors, musicians and stagecraft.  I sort of forgot that the stage is a different medium than film, and that you can become much more emotionally involved with real people strutting and fretting their hour(s) upon the stage than you do watching it on the screen, even if it's the same story.
Second, I was struck by the truly artful storytelling of Hamilton, and this is what I did not expect.  Even the one musical that I admit to liking, Les Miserables, comes with the fact that it is based on the work of Victor Hugo and tells a story of human redemption that is well fleshed out in words.  The musical relies upon that foundation, but does not have to say everything the book says.  Hamilton does justice to the historical source of the narrative, but does not get bogged down with such, which would be pretty unbearable in a play where most of the dialogue is essentially a rap battle.  But the weight of the story is, in fact, rooted in the true story of Alexander Hamilton, it involves stupendous success and crushing tragedy all on its own.  Hamilton is neither a hero or a villain, neither is Aaron Burr.  Full disclosure, most of what I know about the actual events comes from reading Gore Vidal's Burr, which is a work of fiction so...
Anyway, Hamilton, if you've got a couple hundred bucks burning a hole in your pocket, go see it. If you've got a soul left these days it will make you sad and hopeful at the same time, which for me is kind of a good feeling.