People who love Hamilton tend to do so for two reasons. One, it takes its history very seriously, weaving a narrative crammed with technical detail and historical fact that, somehow, Miranda makes lyrical. Act II opens with Hamilton and Jefferson locked in a rap battle over whether or not to establish a national bank. Hamilton won't take lectures from a slave owner: "Hey neighbour/ Your debts are paid cuz you don't pay for labour/ 'We plant seeds in the South. We create.'/ Yeah, keep ranting/ We know who's really doing the planting!"
Those lyrics are the second reason why Hamilton has seized the public imagination: the clever way it explores race. A story about dead white men is performed with modern music by a multiracial cast. Just as Barack Obama proved that anyone, regardless of the colour of their skin, can play the part of the President, so Miranda's show asks: "How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a/ Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten/ Spot in the Caribbean by providence, impoverished, in squalor/ Grow up to be a hero and a scholar?" The answer is: by genius and hard work, and the message is that any black or Latino could do it, too — given half a chance. So compelling is the show's the message that Hamilton has been propelled from a half-remembered face on the $10 bill to a symbol of social progress.
But how accurate is that? Hamilton was opposed to slavery, which makes him look like a liberal visionary next to many of his peers. But Miranda's immigrant hero was associated with the passage of some of the most blatantly anti-immigrant legislation in US history and Hamilton, oddly for such an encyclopaedic play, makes no mention of this.
In its focus on the famous faces of the revolution, Hamilton takes a surprisingly conservative approach to American history. It's an old-fashioned tale of great men building a great country, rather than a country that, in contradiction of its stated aims, conspired to keep slavery alive until the 1860s — while its economic and social system displays obvious injustices even today.
In November last year, Mike Pence attended a performance of Hamilton and one of the actors addressed him from the stage: "We are the diverse Americans who are [alarmed] that your new Administration will not ... and uphold our inalienable rights." Donald Trump tweeted: "The cast and producers of Hamilton, which I hear is highly overrated, should immediately apologise to Mike Pence for their terrible behaviour."
Trump was wrong: the show isn't overrated. It is imperfect history but musically sublime and — as the age of Obama, with his promise of forming "a more perfect union", has given way to the age of Trump — it has taken on the quality of protest music. "I'm just like my country," sings Hamilton, "I'm young, scrappy and hungry/ And I'm not throwing away my shot!"
