Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical Hamilton, which is also streaming on Disney+ as a movie, is one of the most popular stage musicals of all time - but just because it gets so much hype doesn't mean it's overrated. The production has been a huge success almost ever since it debuted Off-Broadway in early 2015, where it played to sold out crowds before making the leap to Broadway, where it was packing out an even bigger theater night after night. The show won 11 Tony Awards, a Grammy, and even a Pulitzer Prize.
Since then, Hamilton has transferred to the streaming world, with a movie version of the show - shot over three nights at the Richard Rogers Theater, NYC, in 2016, and featuring the original Broadway cast - proving to be yet another big success. Hamilton on Disney+ has earned rave reviews, and captured the cultural zeitgeist in a way Disney+ has long needed since The Mandalorian came to an end in December 2019. It's massively driven subscriber numbers and app downloads for the service, but what's behind such broad appeal, and is it deserving of such astronomical success?
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Firstly, Hamilton isn't overrated in the slightest. It does enjoy a level of hype that almost no other Broadway musical can hope to match, but there are good reasons for that. The songs in Hamilton, which blend a variety of musical styles, encompassing rap and hip-hop but also British Invasion, power ballads, showtunes, and so much more, are not only uniquely exhilarating, but also works of genius in how they're structured, and how they reference both the history of the story they're telling and the musical genres they're indebted too. And that story, even with some inaccuracies, is a great one, filled with heroism and tragedy, love and loss, wars and politics. It's helped by the fact that Hamilton's cast - especially that seen on Disney+ - isn't just filled with excellent singers and dancers, but actors; one thing the movie version really highlights is their facial expressions, and just how deep each performance goes.
There is an almost endless list of platitudes that could be applied to Hamilton beyond just its songs, from the great use of staging to the dazzling choreography, lighting, sublime costume work. Of course, similar things could be said for many other musicals - although Hamilton is the best musical of the modern era - so its quality doesn't fully account for its popularity. That stems in part from word-of-mouth: Hamilton is the kind of show that everyone talks about, so much so it catches the attention of people who'd otherwise have no interest in a musical, or even the theater in general. The quality leads to a sense of hype which leads to those sold-out crowds, which then only feeds the hype machine further still. Because Hamilton became so difficult to see, with shows constantly sold-out and tickets priced in the hundreds of dollars, then it became a true event experience in the way no other musical can match, with everyone wanting to know what the fuss is about.
Hamilton also came along as the right show at the right time, too. The show re-packages an important and overlooked part of America's history through the lens of people of color, thus becoming a story of immigrants (who "get the job done") and how they helped lay the foundations of the United States. This promotion of diversity, inclusion, and multiculturalism has felt important and relevant from Hamilton's debut to the present day, and adds to the show's appeal, which is then only increased further when it's criticized by figures such as Donald Trump and Mike Pence - moments that drew even more eyes to the production.
Hamilton isn't a perfect show; there are plenty of changes to real-life history, certain characters are given a slightly shorter shrift, and not every musical number is an absolute hit. But it is a great one, at once specifically American and yet with themes that can be applied universally, and with songs that stay in your head long after the curtain has come down. It may not be for everyone (and as with anything, it's fine to not like it), but it's definitely not deserving of being labelled as overrated.