Not Hamilton, yet Hamilton

[+ E.T.Bass]

This cute guy from Northwestern, his cute friend and his song about Hamilton's love for John Laurens.

A clever video and a fun song.

 

I'm one of the last that hasn't seen Hamilton but I understand the musical does not do much about the depth of Hamilton's love for Laurens and so this young man has filled the void left by Broadway.

 

 

[+ WilliamM]

Wonderful. I greatly enjoyed the recent Hamilton biography, which included Laurens.

 

Thank you for the video. He was left out of the musical, so the video is valuable (at least to me).

[+ Avalon]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Laurens#Sexuality_and_relationship_with_Alexander_Hamilton

 

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/6-reasons-alexander-hamilton-john-laurens-totally-boyfriends

[+ WilliamM]

Please ignore @Avalon, who is a huge fan of Wikipedia.

 

The Hamilton bio I mentioned is by Ron Chernow.

[+ Avalon]

Please ignore @Avalon, who is a huge fan of Wikipedia.

 

The Hamilton bio I mentioned is by Ron Chernow.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Chernow

 

Last century when I first went online I had lots of questions. The Encyclopedia Britannica I had did not have the Moon Landing.

 

Many times I was told "Wikipedia is your friend". It is a great resource!

Edited July 29, 2018 by Avalon

[BroadwayDave]

Laurens was indeed in “Hamilton”, and in quite a few scenes all through Act 1. Lin-Manuel Miranda also said he wanted to recognize the relationship of the two men, but not focus on it, very briefly referring to it in “My Shot”.

 

I also read the Ron Chernow biography before seeing “Hamilton”, and there was a LOT left out in the transformation of book to musical, the latter obviously not meant to be a direct translation to stage from the incredibly detailed tome.

[+ WilliamM]

Laurens was indeed in “Hamilton”, and in quite a few scenes all through Act 1. Lin-Manuel Miranda also said he wanted to recognize the relationship of the two men, but not focus on it, very briefly referring to it in “My Shot”.

 

I also read the Ron Chernow biography before seeing “Hamilton”, and there was a LOT left out in the transformation of book to musical, the latter obviously not meant to be a direct translation to stage from the incredibly detailed tome.

 

As you know, I live in Philadelpia.

So I was aware of many locations when Hamilton served at Valley Forge and later in Washington's cabinet. I missed that connection in the musical.

[BroadwayDave]

Also, today I finally finished watching the A&E Original Series “Turn: Washington’s Spies” (40 episodes / 4 seasons, on Netflix), and Alexander Hamilton shows up near the end of Season 3 (if I remember correctly). There’s a lot of A.Ham in this story stretching through Season 4. This is a GREAT show and I enjoyed it immensely.

[+ WilliamM]

Laurens was indeed in “Hamilton”, and in quite a few scenes all through Act 1. Lin-Manuel Miranda also said he wanted to recognize the relationship of the two men, but not focus on it, very briefly referring to it in “My Shot”.

 

I also read the Ron Chernow biography before seeing “Hamilton”, and there was a LOT left out in the transformation of book to musical, the latter obviously not meant to be a direct translation to stage from the incredibly detailed tome.

 

I saw "Funny Girl," and Steisand's other musical, "I can get for you Wholesale" before the cast albums were released. The same thing happened with " Hamilton," so I am a bit confused why I did not like "Hamilton." Perhaps I missed the details only possible in a long book.

[BroadwayDave]

Books are great things. They allow the author to insert significant detail that sometimes has to be omitted due to the running length of the program. Short of turning the musical into two parts - similar to what they did with “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”, with a total running length of five hours and fifteen minutes - “Hamilton” is already three hours long. I imagine it would have lost quite a bit of its popularity and uniqueness had it been turned into a two-part musical. It would have been sort of ridiculous at that point.

 

Now, as I normally do with musicals I attend, I’ve been listening to the OBCR since the day I bought my ticket to see the show. Having read countless reviews, and knowing the show was “sung-through”, I knew that what was in the OBCR was the whole show - lock, stock, and barrel. There was to be nothing else, no excess dialogue, like what you find in many other traditional musicals where dialogue and music share the stage evenly to a degree. So having read the book while I was listening to the OBCR, I knew exactly what I was in for.

 

One of the main reasons I listen to the OBCR before seeing the show is that sometimes there will be an over eager orchestra that will drown out portions of the song, as they did in “Waitress”, “Love Never Dies”, and a couple others. And in some cases, the performing artist in the musical sings with such inflection or pitch, or so fast, it’s next to impossible to understand the lyrics, as in the case of “Guns and Ships” and the initial part sang by Lafayette. Listening to the OBCR in full hasn’t always been to my advance, as in the case of “Love Never Dies”, where I knew the ending before I saw it. Sort of a self-inflicted spoiler alert.

 

Not everyone listens to the OBCR, some not at all. Due to the fact that a good part of the “story” is told through the song, I feel it important to listen to it beforehand. You can see those who don’t rifling through their playbills trying to find out what song they’re on and where it’s at in the story. But again, in the case of “Hamilton”, a limited time frame dictated leaving out detailed parts of his, and others, amazing lives, where a long, drawn-out event was reduced to one line in a song. Take for instance when Jefferson comes back from Paris, and asks Sally to get the letter off of his desk. That “Sally” is another entire book in itself.

 

So, yes, details of Hamilton’s life and the autobiography were left out. That’s why we get multi-season and multi-part week long mini-series like “Turn”, “John Adams”, and “Sons of Liberty”.

Edited August 2, 2018 by BroadwayDave

[+ WilliamM]

Books are great things. They allow the author to insert significant detail that sometimes has to be omitted due to the running length of the program. Short of turning the musical into two parts - similar to what they did with “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”, with a total running length of five hours and fifteen minutes - “Hamilton” is already three hours long. I imagine it would have lost quite a bit of its popularity and uniqueness had it been turned into a two-part musical. It would have been sort of ridiculous at that point.

 

Now, as I normally do with musicals I attend, I’ve been listening to the OBCR since the day I bought my ticket to see the show. Having read countless reviews, and knowing the show was “sung-through”, I knew that what was in the OBCR was the whole show - lock, stock, and barrel. There was to be nothing else, no excess dialogue, like what you find in many other traditional musicals where dialogue and music share the stage evenly to a degree. So having read the book while I was listening to the OBCR, I knew exactly what I was in for.

 

One of the main reasons I listen to the OBCR before seeing the show is that sometimes there will be an over eager orchestra that will drown out portions of the song, as they did in “Waitress”, “Love Never Dies”, and a couple others. And in some cases, the performing artist in the musical sings with such inflection or pitch, or so fast, it’s next to impossible to understand the lyrics, as in the case of “Guns and Ships” and the initial part sang by Lafayette. Listening to the OBCR in full hasn’t always been to my advance, as in the case of “Love Never Dies”, where I knew the ending before I saw it. Sort of a self-inflicted spoiler alert.

 

Not everyone listens to the OBCR, some not at all. Due to the fact that a good part of the “story” is told through the song, I feel it important to listen to it beforehand. You can see those who don’t rifling through their playbills trying to find out what song they’re on and where it’s at in the story. But again, in the case of “Hamilton”, a limited time frame dictated leaving out detailed parts of his, and others, amazing lives, where a long, drawn-out event was reduced to one line in a song. Take for instance when Jefferson comes back from Paris, and asks Sally to get the letter off of his desk. That “Sally” is another entire book in itself.

 

So, yes, details of Hamilton’s life and the autobiography were left out. That’s why we get multi-season and multi-part week long mini-series like “Turn”, “John Adams”, and “Sons of Liberty”.

 

"Hamilton" is a far more complicated musical than "Funny Girl." Some people still remembered Fanny Brice when the musical opened. Love her or hate her, the show had Barbra Streisand. And the songs were memorable on the own before the cast album.

[samhexum]

Not Hamilton, yet Hamilton

I greatly enjoyed the recent Hamilton biography

Lin-Manuel Miranda also said he wanted to recognize the relationship of the two men, but not focus on it

I feel that Hamilton deserves the attention it's gotten.

 

 

[bostonman]

One of the main reasons I listen to the OBCR before seeing the show is that sometimes there will be an over eager orchestra that will drown out portions of the song, as they did in “Waitress”, “Love Never Dies”, and a couple others.

 

I'm sorry - as a musical theatre musician myself, I can't let you get away with that. You know full well that musicals these days are written for sound design - the balance between the stage and the orchestra is 100% controlled by the sound board op. With many shows now, the orchestra isn't even in the pit, or even isn't in the same BUILDING as the show - they may be playing in another room somewhere. So don't tell me about overeager orchestras. Those of us down in "the pit" often have zero control about how we're being heard by the audience.

 

Now, I'm not blaming the board ops across the board - sometimes the producer or director is dictating a certain quality/voulme of sound that they want as a final result, and sometimes it actually does no good to tell them that the sound isn't balanced right - they hear what they hear and they want what they want and that's how it is. But when every performer - actors and musicians alike - is miked, the ultimate balance relies on the mic levels, not the degree of "overeager" players.

 

If a show is done in an unmiked space (as is often the case in smaller regional theatres), THEN you might be able to complain if 'the band is too loud" - but don't you dare blame the musicians if it's a miked show.

 

But what you should keep in mind, of course, is that the nature of a heavily edited and micromanaged/mixed studio recording is always going to be different than the balance that you hear in an actual theatre. That's actually not the fault of the live theatrical performance, more that the "perfection" one hears on a cast album is very artificial.

 

End of rant.

[samhexum]

Alexander Hamilton may have come to America — but it’s the porn parody “Hamiltoe” that really made a splash.

 

New York comedian Eitan Levine really cleaned up at Saturday’s Adult Video News Awards (the porn community’s answer to the Oscars). He bagged Clever Title of the Year honors for “Hamiltoe,” a porn parody he came up with after seeing the smash Broadway show.

 

The 29-year-old Upper West Side “weird journalist-comedian hybrid” tells The Post of his surprise win, “It’s the best bragging rights of all time.”

 

Levine, who grew up Modern Orthodox in Springfield, NJ, and graduated from Yeshiva University, admits that while he’s not the most likely candidate to dominate the porn space, he’s only human.

 

“I think everyone watches porn, to be completely honest,” says Levine, who also lived in Israel. “It’s a bigger red flag now if you don’t watch porn. If you don’t have a computer full of porn, you must have a freezer full of human feet.”

 

The “aggressively single” Levine is basking in his big win — even if his traditional bubbe isn’t. “I don’t think Bubbe knows what porn is — she still has a flip phone,” says Levine, who adds that the rest of his family are trying to get on board with the decidedly unkosher comedy.

 

The former writer for Elite Daily explains the process for the beloved porn parody. “The original plot was that Britain had intense porn rules so Alexander Hamilton would be a pounding father to make a better porn,” he tells The Post.

 

“Hamiltoe” isn’t for the faint of heart, with explicit sex scenes, although it’s nothing Levine can’t handle. “It’s aggressive porn — they’re very into it. There’s a lot of mascara running,” he says.

 

It was produced by Wood Rocket, which helmed other parodies including “Strokémon,” “Assventure Time” and “Fap To The Future,” according to the “Hamiltoe” GoFundMe page, which has raised $1,000 to offset a documentary Levine’s working on.

 

As for the award nominations in November, Levine says he was blown away that his little porn that could was nominated for four awards, and immediately mounted a “for your consideration” campaign.

 

“Saturday Night Live’s” “Weekend Update” even name-dropped the fledgling porn with a joke about Hamilton throwing away his shot.

 

For the awards in Las Vegas, where Cardi B performed, Levine admits it was a culture shock for the nice Jewish boy from Jersey, who walked the red carpet draped in authentic colonial garb.

 

The tears — and whatever else — flowed when he won.

 

“I absolutely lost it — it was the coolest thing that ever happened,” says Levine, who adds that he’s officially done with porn, as soon as he finishes one item on his to-do list: “I’m going to Jizney-land!”

 

The outsize attention on “Hamiltoe,” which also won the award for best soundtrack, also includes a tweet from the Pulitzer Prizes committee: “This amuses us. Will the ‘Hamilton’ porn parody also win a Pulitzer Prize?”

 

But for Levine, there’s no comparison between the two: “Ours is free online, and you don’t have to enter a lottery to see it.” Lin-Manuel Miranda is rumored to be a fan as well.

 

But Levine still maintains whose production is best: “You can’t jerk off to ‘Hamilton,’ but you can jerk off to ‘Hamiltoe’ — that’s the biggest difference.”

 

[+ nycman]

I'm sorry - as a musical theatre musician myself, I can't let you get away with that.

Ohhhhh....Miss Thing.....I think you hit a nerve!

End of rant.

Ohhhhh....I was RIGHT!

 

Seriously though, I enjoyed hearing the modern "view from the pit".

[bostonman]

Another case in point, btw - the dead-on-arrival "Rent Live" the other night. As everyone knows by now, what was broadcast was primarily the dress rehearsal, and it may be that at least some of the singers were saving their voices a bit, even though they knew that this rehearsal was being recorded with the possibility that some of the footage might be used (especially for a final edit before a commercial release). Obviously no one knew that the lead would break his ankle, and no one could have predicted that the solution for the broadcast would be to air the dress rehearsal. But I do wonder why the cast didn't sing out nevertheless.

 

But, all this to say that, in the small portion of the broadcast I watched, one of my main observations was that the band was too loud.

 

Was this ultimately the fault of the singers saving it up for the actual event? Was it more the fault of the audio engineers who weren't sensitive to the balance? Probably a combination of the two, but certainly the sound board ops should have been more aware. What I can certainly say is that the fault was not with the band (if it was even live) - they had no say (and probably no knowledge) in the matter. The balance of the sound is ultimately up to the engineers.

 

Then again, sometimes EVERYTHING is too loud. Going to see the tour of American Idiot in Boston a few years ago was fun (I had a former student in the cast as well), but OMG, my ears were not happy with the decibel levels. Though yes, you could indeed hear the singers, lol...