• Home
  • About
    • Performance Monkey
    • David Jays
    • Contact
  • Other AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

Performance Monkey

David Jays on theatre and dance

Propwatch: the letters in Hamilton

January 21, 2018 by David Jays 4 Comments

For a show that might reshape the musical for the 21st century, there’s an awful lot of paper in Hamilton. The stage is a flurry of letters, ledgers, leaves and broadsides – it’s almost antiquated. Hamilton has sui generis swagger and the sound of something new, but it’s a story about what is written, what is read. It’s a show built on pen scratching furiously over paper.

In 2009, Lin-Manuel Miranda, the mensch of all our hearts, introduced a song from what was then a proposed concept album, saying Hamilton’s significance was in ‘the strength of his writing – he embodies the word’s ability to make a difference.’ As album grew into an all-consuming production, the act of writing remained integral: papers pass incessantly from hand to hand at high speed during the production. Alexander Hamilton – founding father, unsatisfied soul – scribbles policy, persuasion, passion and pique, to win a fight, woo a wife. He writes lofty, in the constitution; he writes low, to slap an enemy. He keeps records of slights and cheque stubs. In song, he’s a whirring wordsmith, but Miranda also makes him a slave to the pen.

Marks of heart and brain

Print engineered ideas during the revolutionary pamphlet wars. But what we see is handwritten – the mark of heart and brain on paper, issuing in the heat of the moment. People don’t waggle booklets, but scatter single sheets or pass them around like love letters. It keeps everything intimate, everything the issue of Hamilton’s teeming brain. He’s Washington’s writing-hand man, and even policy feels personal, a beef with Burr or Jefferson. Scribble, scribble, Mr Hamilton.

Spend an afternoon on pinterest, and you’ll see how Ham fans embrace this motif. Key lyrics are calligraphed on sepia backgrounds. They identify how everything in this show comes from and goes directly to the heart. None more so than in the myriad versions of the letter Hamilton sends to Angelica, the woman he might have married – addressed to not ‘My dearest Angelica’ but ‘My dearest, Angelica’. The comma speaks volumes, cracks open an unspoken love. ‘One stroke and you’ve consumed my waking days,’ she sings. Fans feel how that tiny mark on paper changes everything.

A highlight of a recent visit to the RSC’s props workshop was the ‘soft props’ corner, where paper becomes stageworthy. The level of detail was boggling – lovingly researched Victorian railway timetables or papal encyclical (Hilary Mantel had sent a letter of appreciation for Wolf Hall’s accurate documents). I was sat too far away to see if Hamilton’s papercraft followed suit: are these blank sheets, printed or penned (anyone who knows, please tell)?

Make way for the words

Is it heretical to wonder what a more assertive production of Hamilton might look like? Whatever you feel about 1980s behemoths by Lloyd Webber, Schönberg and Boublil, these productions rippled far beyond musical theatre. Trevor Nunn, Hal Prince, Nicholas Hytner and their design teams stamped emblematic images (chandelier, helicopter) on spectators’ brains; their choreographers, notably Gillian Lynne, turned movement into meaning. Filched from the bolder end of classical theatre, the style fed back into it tenfold. Mainstream Shakespeare, international opera, keen studio work were all transformed. A space dominated by a single theme- and story-telling element, hardwired with movement, became a prevailing style.

There’s none of that in Thomas Kail’s production of Hamilton. It makes way for the words – I’ve rarely listened so hard, so happily during a show. We mostly see someone standing centre stage, spinning fleet phrases and spitting puns, a twine of rhyme that keeps pulsing forward. What’s a director to do but ensure that nothing distracts? A polite timber set is reminiscent of the RSC’s duller history plays; sharp choreography is tightly confined – ripples and rucks that won’t pull focus.

Perhaps a staging of more invention would blow our tiny minds – it’s already hyperbolically exciting. As it is, paper fits right in. Audiences cherish this unlikely story as contemporary – we feel the zeal, we miss it in our public discourse. Miranda shows us our current moment, even as we see the first draft of history. It’s a reminder that history is process, never inevitable. It’s written, maybe forgotten, then rediscovered, like a pile of papers at the back of a drawer, personal to the writer and the eventual reader. No wonder we love Hamilton. Scribble, scribble.

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: musicals, props, propwatch, theatre

Comments

  1. Poly Gianniba says

    January 21, 2018 at 11:46 pm

    “…to win a fight, woo a wife.” You are rhyming, sir 🙂

    Reply
    • David Jays says

      January 22, 2018 at 12:17 pm

      It’s infectious (I hope someone stops me if it all gets too much).

      Reply
      • Poly Gianniba says

        January 22, 2018 at 5:59 pm

        You are good.
        On a more serious note, I was thinking how shocking it was when [SPOILERS] Eliza was burning the letters. It’s not unusual but here it felt momentous.

        Reply
        • David Jays says

          January 23, 2018 at 8:34 am

          Yes! Truly upsetting, for both of them.

          Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

David Jays

I am a writer and critic on performance, books and film and currently write for, among others, the Sunday Times and the Guardian. I edit Dance Gazette, the magazine of the Royal Academy of Dance. I’m also a lifelong Londoner: it’s the perfect city for connecting to art forms that both look back and spring forward. [Read More]

Performance Monkey

This is what theatre and dance audiences do: we sit in the dark, watching performances. And then, if it seems worth it, we think about what we've seen, and how it made us feel. The blog should be a conversation, so please comment on the posts and add your thoughts. You know what I've always … [Read More...]

@mrdavidjays

Tweets by @mrdavidjays

Archives

Recent Comments

  • Veronica Horwell on Hamilton | Lockdown Theatre Club 17: “Know what you mean about the underpowered pre-17late90s shoulder: a bottle slope approach to body outline — the Hamilton coats…” Jul 8, 13:41
  • Sarah Lenton on Hamilton | Lockdown Theatre Club 17: “Blimey. A tour de force! Hugely enjoyable. Slight demur on whether a period raised fist would have produced a scrunched…” Jul 7, 21:44
  • william osborne on Hamilton | Lockdown Theatre Club 17: “An article that analyzes the serious problems with “Hamilton” by Ed Morales, a journalist and lecturer at Columbia University’s Center…” Jul 7, 20:20
  • william osborne on Hamilton | Lockdown Theatre Club 17: “Indeed, in the late 18th century people learned that properly toned-down attire was important for slave owners proclaiming democracy. And…” Jul 7, 19:28
  • David Jays on Bringing Up Baby | Lockdown Theatre Club 16: “Hello Ana, and thanks so much for this. Joining in is, I hope, easy: we all find the film on…” Jul 3, 16:02
January 2018
M T W T F S S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
293031  
« Sep   Feb »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Hamilton | Lockdown Theatre Club 17
  • Bringing Up Baby | Lockdown Theatre Club 16
  • The Go-Between | Lockdown Theatre Club 14
  • Girlhood | Lockdown Theatre Club 13
  • All That Jazz | Lockdown Theatre Club 12

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in