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Things I love about “Stay Alive.” (It’s okay for me to write a list instead of an essay, right? This is my blog and I make the rules, right? Okay, whew.)
1. Eliza’s “Stay alive . . .,” later joined by Angelica and the women of the company, is a plea to Hamilton, but also the voice of every person who’s sent someone off to war, whispering “stay alive” to the person they love. And it’s a prayer for the revolutionary effort as a whole, which is not doing well.
2. The condensed and quite accurate account of the war at this point. In addition to concisely filling us in on how dire both the strategic and equipment circumstances are, in well under three minutes “Stay Alive” also takes us through one representative battle. It also tracks the three friends, whose role in the plot is not only tell us about Hamilton’s private life, but to give us a personal connection to the various aspects of the war: the southern battles with Laurens, espionage with Mulligan, leadership in key northern battles with Lafayette.
3. The tension built by the piano’s repeated four-note figure and the heartbeat that runs under most of the music. The stakes are very high.
4. The rhyme “Yeah. He’s not the choice I would have gone with / He shits the bed at the battle of Monmouth.” As Lawrence Block’s burglar/book lover Bernie Rhodenbarr says in The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling, “Bad verse is when you can tell which line is there to rhyme with the other.” It had to have been “Monmouth” that Miranda needed a rhyme for, but it doesn’t sound like it. He makes great verse out of tough rhyming challenges like this all the time.
5. As is true throughout the play, singers refrain from punching up the rhyming words, so that it can take several times through before you hear that
The best thing he can do for the revolution
Is turn n’ go back to plantin’ tobacco in Mount Vernon
conceals a rhyme:
The best thing he can do for the revolution is turn n’
Go back to plantin’ tobacco in Mount Vernon
What’s even better than a clever rhyme? That’s right: a clever, subtle rhyme!
6. Washington is being the grownup again. Charles Lee didn’t just talk (write) smack about him; he was part of a serious campaign to get Congress to remove Washington from his post, dating from well before the Battle of Monmouth. (Honestly, the campaigners had a point, though Lee’s animus was personal; he’d always resented Washington’s promotion over him. If Washington renamed Fort Constitution Fort Lee in order to mollify him, it didn’t work.) Hamilton and Laurens, young and brash, rise to the bait, but Washington serenely focuses on the mission.
Washington: Don’t do a thing. History will prove him wrong
Hamilton: But, sir!
Washington: We have a war to fight, let’s move along.
Lacking Washington’s maturity, they ignore him. Now, when Hamilton says, “Laurens, do not throw away your shot,” do you think he is saying “Don’t duel”? Or “Aim to kill”? More on that in the next entry . . .
Two people find each other. Their lines match, like two halves of a broken ring. They’re married. Except that what goes on beneath the surface of a simple story makes it much more interesting, and the next song, “Satisfied,” remixes “Helpless” to show what else was going on while Eliza and Alexander were falling in love.
Erin Conley wrote such a good analysis of this song (“A Deep Dive into the Hamilton Stunner “Satisfied”) and said so much of what I want to say, that instead of repeating her I’ll just encourage you to read her essay and add a few thoughts of my own. (Warning: Her essay will make you want to take a second and third job if it’s what will get you airfare to the nearest performance of Hamilton. I cannot wait to see this choreography.)
Angelica Schuyler’s rush of language, her aside to check if we’re keeping up when we barely are (“you see it, right?”), the rapid-fire rapping (try it–it’s almost as hard as the more celebrated “Guns and Ships”), the shifts between speech and song (oh that voice!), all show a mind at work that’s so nimble, everyone else seems to move in slow motion. Only Alexander Hamilton moves at her speed. No wonder she will never be satisfied. “In a world in which [her] only job is to marry rich,” what is such a brilliant person to do with herself?
Depending on her temperament, she turns bitter, wastes her talents on trivialities, kills herself, entertains herself by playing games at the expense of slower and more innocent people . . . characters like Hedda Gabler, Lady Macbeth, and the Marquise de Merteuil in Liaisons Dangereuses come to mind, not to mention real middle-class US women I’ve encountered whose lives could never quite flower within the constraints of nurse / teacher / secretary / mother they were permitted. But in the interpretation of Lin-Manuel Miranda, and her portrayer Renée Elise Goldberry, Angelica Schuyler is saved from any of these fates by her love for her sister. She keeps on flirting with her brother-in-law, but she means what she says in her toast–she wishes them only the best. As she’ll say of Eliza later, in a look back at “Satisfied,”
I will choose her happiness over mine every time. (“The Reynolds Pamphlet”)
Whether she and Hamilton ever consummated their mutual attraction (or even confessed it?) is unknown, either in the real-life version or the play. What’s evident is that there was a tension there, and Miranda imagines it drawn tight by Angelica’s loyalty to her sister. She could have had him, but she “sized him up so quickly,” as she did everything; and by the time the initial attraction had turned to love, Eliza was in love with him too. (And what Angelica feels for Alexander is love. Note she does not say, “If I told her that I loved him,” which might leave some ambiguity, but “If I tell her that I love him.”)
Angelica, in short, is a woman of honor. This makes her a fascinating foil for Hamilton: along with a quick wit, charming manner, love for Eliza, and fascination for political philosophy, their strict code of honor is something they have in common. But whereas his is based on pride, hers is based on love; his honor is about taking care of himself, while hers is about care for others. Honestly, Angelica, he doesn’t deserve you.
I took my first foray into National Theatre Live recently, lured like millions by the prospect of seeing Benedict Cumberbatch play Hamlet, and I really enjoyed it. If you want to see interesting theater at $20-plus-handling, I highly recommend looking up what’s being broadcast from the National Theatre to a cinema near you. Not only is there great acting, but when else do you get to watch Shakespeare and eat popcorn? It’s like being a groundling, except with more comfortable seats. My one complaint was that the preliminaries made the actual start time 30 minutes after the time on the ticket. I wished they’d told us whether we had time for a run to the restroom; next time I’ll know.
Specifically re: Hamlet, it had been a long time since I’d read or seen it, and something has changed in me–not in the play, obviously–because I realized that that play is sad. Really heartbreakingly sad. I know that that is what the word “tragedy” means, but reading the play in my callow, callous youth, the sheer waste and misery of it didn’t make such an impression. The play opens with Hamlet already sunk in grief; you never see him as he was before his father’s death, but only get enough intimations of his humor, intelligence, and emotional fervor to feel the decline. It closes not only with eight people freshly dead, five of them young, but with the country handed over to a stranger: something else that never struck me as that tragic before but on this viewing, seemed to be the final evidence of how badly the time is out of joint. Hamlet’s murder of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern also hit me hard–it’s so cruel and unnecessary, and he’s so completely lacking in remorse. Everything about his collapse into isolation is right there in that moment: how he’s unable to see that he is not the only one whose strings are pulled by powers he can’t resist. Cumberbatch makes us believe in a Hamlet with a razor-sharp intelligence who can turn that intelligence to exquisite self-awareness, yet also be blind to the obvious about himself.
Something else I had forgotten, or not fully realized when I last saw a production or read it (15 and 30 years ago, respectively), is how funny the play is. I remembered Hamlet as one of Shakespeare’s most pleasingly sarcastic characters, but he’s funny in other ways too. This production played up his wit and imbued certain lines that can be played pretty straight (e.g., “he will stay till ye come,”.about the dead Polonius) with heavy sarcasm. The Hamlet in this production is a very funny guy, not just in a bitter way (that would get tiresome) but with a real sense that even on the slope to disaster, he’s enjoying himself sometimes. That glimpse into what his personality must have been like before the events of the play adds a bitter twist to our laughter.
I have many questions about the characters, especially Ophelia and Gertrude–my main objections to the direction in this version are in the indeterminate way these two are portrayed. What is making Ophelia completely fall apart–her father’s death, or the collapse of any hope of a relationship with Hamlet, or something else? (This production played down the “She’s no longer a virgin and is therefore doomed” interpretation by removing her Valentine’s Day song about “the maid that out a maid / Never departed more.”) Was there any hope for them to marry in the first place? Polonius and Laertes stress that that was always out of the question due to their difference in station; yet Gertrude says she hoped they would, and she ought to be the final word on court protocol. So which is it? You can direct it to favor either one, or to point up Ophelia’s confusion about which is true, but this production just left me feeling confused, myself.
And Gertrude: After the big scene between her and Hamlet, does she shun Claudius as her son has begged her to do? How does the accusation of murder affect her feelings towards him? Altogether this production did not give us much to go on about Claudius and Gertrude’s relationship–no spark of passion nor mistrust. Another fascinating question–did Gertrude drink the poison knowingly–can be interpreted strongly one way or the other, but this production left it vague and in fact sped right past the critical moment.
Likewise, the dumbshow interaction between Hamlet and Ophelia in Act II, scene 1 was done so fleetingly that I wondered why they put it in at all, and whether it was supposed to be the incident that Ophelia then reported to Polonius, or something else. I know it’s hard to fit Hamlet into three hours, but here and there they needed to slow down.
The set was stunning, but lots of aspects of the production seemed off or aimless. The costumes were a bit bewildering, especially Horatio’s everpresent backpack. Really, what was that supposed to signify? I wanted to say “Dude, we know you’re a student. You can put down the backpack now.” “Dude” would be the right term–he was Hipster Horatio, with elaborate tattoos, big glasses and a little beard. I have no idea who the children in the promotional materials are supposed to be–younger versions of the characters? Laertes was boring; maybe this is Shakespeare’s fault.
But any number of glitches wouldn’t have outweighed the delight of a few marvelous, marvelous performances: Hamlet and Polonius (Jim Norton) being the best, with nice little touches from minor characters such as the first gravedigger and Rosencrantz (Guildenstern didn’t feel as engaged to me, despite having more lines). Ciarán Hinds’s take on Claudius seemed flat at first, but grew on me more and more. It’s one of my favorite characters in Shakespeare, and in his performance, I saw things I hadn’t seen before: that he acts more like a CEO than a king; that a spirit of cover-your-ass rules his life, as we see in his relentless efforts to justify himself to Laertes and anyone else who will listen. Ophelia (Siân Brooke) was terrific before she went mad; I’m not sure how I feel about her portrayal of Ophelia after her father’s death. Maybe this comes down to the fact that I always want to sidle up to Ophelia and say, “Just between us, I promise not to breathe a word–aren’t you the teensiest bit relieved that he’s gone?” I’m always wanting to see that ambivalence in Ophelia. The rest of us think that Polonius is a buffoon and destructively overbearing; surely his children chafe just a bit?
Anyway, a great night at the “theater.” National Theatre Live keeps showing plays for months after they’re produced, even after their runs on the stage end, so you can still catch this Hamlet and lots of other productions.
Sermons in Stones 
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