I have resisted decade-end analysis, in part because decades are so arbitrary -- I think 2017 and later versus 2016 and earlier will prove to be a more meaningful divide. With that said, I'll play. What's the cultural piece of the decade for my money? That's easy.
It's HAMILTON. Of course it is. Not because it was perfect, but because of the way it shook the earth. At first, it invigorated and thrilled people so emphatically that it almost didn't get the analysis it deserves, which of course uncovers flaws.
Flaws in the way the women are written, in the melding of fiction and fantasy, in the stubborn desire to find nobility on a grand scale while admitting to folly on a small scale. It was identifying and feeling my way through those flaws that let me feel the most attached to it.
It is brilliant in music, perhaps even more brilliant in lyrics, which are technically meticulous (befitting its connection to rap), but also so Broadway: "Lock up your daughters and horses/of course, it's hard to have intercourse over four sets of corsets" is pure Cole Porter.
It is a stunning document of the way some men follow their egos, the memory of a wound, anywhere -- even death. And whether Washington was this person or not, his profound wisdom stranded among these young men's recklessness is a tragedy only he sees coming.
And while I still struggle with the stories told about the women, both the bitterness of Angelica's understanding that she loves someone disappointing and Eliza's closing discussion of the decades she spent trying to make her own legacy by protecting everyone else's are stunning.
It is the right question: Who lives, who dies, who tells your story? It's a work about the care it takes to honor the dead, and the pain of knowing, as Burr does, that you will be remembered for the worst thing you ever did. Careful the things you say -- children will listen.
When I turn the album on now, it always makes me cry -- not just the sad parts, but just the parts that are about the hopes people have that they can do something meaningful for the world. It's such a fine line between hero and megalomaniac.
I love the power this gave LMM, and I love the fact that the men who led this cast were brilliant Broadway muses, much as white women like Ethel Merman and Mary Martin once were. Performers who can be given perfect work to do partly when they're given work perfect for *them*.
A lot of us saturated ourselves with this score. I now sometimes take some months away from it just so I can be thrilled by it again. That Lafayette entrance in "Guns and Ships"? The rueful way Burr says "Congrats, Alexander; smile more"? The "my father wasn't around" echo?
Those things are thrilling. Wonderful. That show deserved every award it won, and it will grow over decades as it's analyzed and criticized, and a generation of performers will trace their theatrical evolutions to singing "Wait For It" in their bedrooms.
Of course it's my favorite of the decade. My favorite everything. The fact that an answer is obvious doesn't make it wrong. At last: /fin
