A night out

We had a night out this past week - Six was playing at Philadelphia at the Academy of Music and we treated ourselves to tickets. They weren't "Broadway" expensive, which is always good for the budget, but they were worth every cent. And the Academy is one of my favorite venues and will appear in the third of my 1930s books, so I looked around and took notes while I was there. 

I wasn't sure how I'd feel about it, actually - since I've been steeped in Tudor history since I was a kid - but I enjoyed every bit of it. Like Hamilton, it's bound to get new people interested in that period of history, and also like Hamilton, it's full of catchy songs that I'm still humming a few days later.

From the first note, the lights and costumes and sheer energy of the show made me smile. I wasn't sure about my husband - he's very tolerant and actually well-versed in Tudor history these days - but going by the audience, this was going to be an absolute estrogen-fest. Groups of girlfriends, mothers and daughters, much squealing and shrieking.

It was fabulous. (And husband survived quite nicely).

It does make me wonder how the wives would feel about being remembered in such a way. Honored? Annoyed? Confused, definitely. They might not understand what a musical was, they definitely wouldn't understand this musical as "music" as it was defined in their day, and they might be offended at some of the portrayals (though they were definitely based on well-known facts, just well-known facts might not be quite factual for some of these ladies).

But still.. almost five hundred years later, they're remembered. And as one of the key questions goes near the end of the show, are they remembered simply because they shared a husband? Or is their husband remembered because of them?

Not throwing away my shot

I don't play a lot of music while I'm working - if I'm writing, it's too distracting, and if I'm sewing, not a lot gets through over the sound of the machine.

Hamilton gets through. I discovered the soundtrack a few years back, after the show hit Broadway but before it hit total public consciousness. It started with the King's songs, which I think are the gateway for people who don't think they'll like a show about a founding father, performed in hip-hop (trust me, you will).

Of course I wanted to see it in NY, but I also want to keep both my kidneys, and that's pretty much what the prices felt like. There were road companies, of course, but I figured eventually one of those would make it to Philly.

Eventually, one did.

And we went to see them last week.

And it was freaking amazing.

That is pretty much my review. We were up high, so I couldn't make out faces, but so much of the show is about the spectacle - the stage, the movement of the dancers, the lighting, and of course the music - that it didn't matter.

It was freaking amazing.

Also, one of the things I really love about Hamilton is the same thing I love about historical fiction. It takes an era, a person, something that people might think of as dry or boring, and returns them to their flesh-and-blood reality, full of urges and desires and bad behavior and good behavior - all the things that take them from cardboard cut-outs in historical dress to living, breathing people who just happened to wear funny clothes and live in a different time period.

No one leaves that theater thinking of Alexander Hamilton as some dry-as-dust founding father. I guarantee it.