What would you pay to see one of the most talked about, acclaimed and controversial musicals in history? $9.99 or $1300?
Thought so.
The show in question is Hamilton, the Broadway musical wowing audiences since 2015 and which attracted huge ticket prices as demand spiked. At its peak, the best seats in the house cost US$3000 ($4500) and, even midway through last year, it cost US$500 (about $750) for the worst seats in Friday night shows – though a midweek matinee was a lot cheaper.
Eventually the best-seats-in-the-house dropped to a level of a mere $1300. Now the $9.99 option has come to New Zealand via Disney+, the live streaming service taking on established players like Netflix – and using the global popularity of Hamilton to spearhead a vast vault of Disney content.
The catalyst? Covid-19. Disney took the unusual step of filming the stage show – a clever cross-pollination movie originally planned for release on Disney+ next year. The coronavirus changed all that; audiences couldn't go to theatres and global tours were delayed. So Hamilton is now available on screen for Disney's $9.99 per month subscription.
The movie stars Lin-Manuel Miranda, the playwright hailed as a genius and the man who plays Hamilton in the original stage cast.
It tells the story of one of America's founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, an immigrant from the West Indies who became George Washington's right-hand man during the Revolutionary War and the new nation's first Treasury Secretary. He was a key figure in the promotion of the US Constitution and the founder of the nation's financial system – introducing paper currency plus the United States Coast Guard, and the New York Post newspaper.
So far, so historical. Hamilton's appeal is that it uses a stunning mixture of hip hop, R&B, pop, soul, and traditional music to tell the tale of the founding fathers.
Reviews of the stage show were much like this one from the Guardian: "One of the many joys of Lin-Manuel Miranda's much-heralded musical is that…it's a rollercoaster of a show in which a bare-headed, largely non-white cast capture the fervour and excitement of revolution while reminding us how much America's identity was shaped by a buccaneering immigrant, Alexander Hamilton."
But the US in which Hamilton opened is not the US of today. Controversy rained down on the show as a result of the George Floyd death and the Black Lives Matter movement – a seismic social shift of similar dimensions to that portrayed in Hamilton.
It has seen statues toppled and popular opinion turn against heroes of the past connected to slavery and colonialism. Historians and fans have criticised what they say is the glorification of Hamilton – a figure portrayed in the show as opposing slavery in all forms and believing in equality.
Harvard University professor of history, Annette Gordon-Reed, said of Hamilton: "He was not an abolitionist. He bought and sold slaves for his in-laws, and opposing slavery was never at the forefront of his agenda. He was not a champion of the little guy, like the show portrays. He was elitist."
The controversy led to the unprecedented step of Miranda apologising last month for the show's failure to publicly denounce systemic racism sooner. The 40-year-old playwright and actor also affirmed the show's support for Black Lives Matter and pointed out how quickly it had responded to previous crises and incidents of racism and hatred.
"That we have not yet firmly spoken the inarguable truth that Black Lives Matter and denounced systematic racism and white supremacy from our official Hamilton channel is a moral failure on our part.
"Hamilton doesn't exist without the black and brown artists who created and revolutionised and changed the world through the culture, music and language of hip-hop," Miranda said.
Disney CEO Bob Chapek, reported after a private meeting with Disney employees, talked about Hamilton's impact on global conversations about anti-racism and a need for more diverse companies.
"I think it was so impactful because in such a divided country, in such a divided world, there are few things that fit in that Venn diagram in the middle that sort of please everybody and bring us together rather than push us apart.
"I think that's what the magic of Disney can do. I think that's [what] the magic of the brand can do... The message of diversity that's implicit in the production really gives us hope for a better, more unified tomorrow."
Whatever you think of all this, the fact remains that the show is still right at the forefront of public opinion and interest – and Disney+ allows you to make up your own mind up at a far lesser cost than $1300.
The Covid-stimulated move to air the movie earlier is also being carefully watched to see if it might herald a new trend around more stage shows being shown as movies – and sooner than the industry had previously figured.
Numbers of viewers and revenues are not available yet but the strong suggestion is that Hamilton has already been a huge success for Disney – with unconfirmed reports suggesting it is already bringing not only new viewers to Disney+ but new demographics.
Chapek was reported as saying to Disney employees: "A great percentage of the new viewers that came into Disney Plus, and there were a lot of them, were a different target audience, a different demographic than what we normally get. That was nice to see."
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