A friend of mine has been aboard the Hamilton train pretty much since it made its Broadway debut; she spent something like eleven hours in the cancellation line to see it, and would gush about it constantly to get me to listen to it, but not much about the synopsis “a 3+ hour hip hop musical about a forgotten founding father” appealed to me, and I’m always wary of new things hyped beyond all reason, as this seemed to be. Then I saw the Grammy Awards performance, and had to admit that it sounded pretty damn cool after all… but I didn’t fall down the rabbit hole properly until shortly before leaving for a US trip in spring of 2016, where I’d listen to nothing but the cast recording for weeks. We entered the ticket lottery every day while in New York, with absolutely no chance – the original cast was still on, so even the cheapest StubHub tickets were around $700 (if you waited until 5 minutes before curtain, that is, otherwise they were well into the four digits).

But a few months later, the London production was announced, and I immediately signed up for early ticket access and requested time off for a week in May a year and a half from then. Buying the tickets was actually a breeze – I got a presale code from Ticketmaster, and had no trouble at all getting the date and tickets I wanted – I chose the anniversary of the day on which I’d seen Gillian Anderson in A Streetcar Named Desire (a London production I saw in New York, so it only felt fitting that I’d see a Broadway production in London on the same date), and got central tickets in the fourth row of the stalls. The first three rows were ridiculously expensive VIP seats, and it’s better to be further back to see the whole stage, anyway. I was over the moon, and started planning my London trip around the musical, leaving it as the highlight on our last evening in the city.

I have to admit that my obsession with the musical burned out shortly after scoring the tickets. I took a long, long break from listening to it; at first because I’d overplayed it for almost an entire year and had gotten sick of it, and then because I wanted to preserve the magic of seeing it on stage (I’d seen the bootlegged version, so there wouldn’t really be any surprises – I wanted to defamiliarize myself with it as much as I could in preparation, especially to give the new cast a chance without my comparing them unfavorably with the original one).

Fast forward to us standing in line to enter the theatre. We’d had a fantastic week in London, and as I started gathering all the things we’ll need to be let in, the excitement suddenly and finally caught up with me. I was restless and buzzing and so thankful to be there.

For evening performances, the theatre opens at 6:15PM. Take care to follow the ticketing directions; it’s the first time in my life that I’ve actually seen the guidelines thoroughly enforced. You need the credit card you payed with (if it’s expired since you purchased the tickets, as was the case with mine, Ticketmaster will remind you of it frequently, until you’ll call them up to update the info to your new one, which I’d done the week before), a copy of the confirmation email, and a photo ID. Your credit card will be swiped, and you’ll be given seat location slips; all members of one party must enter at the same time. They even went through the queue with a drug/bomb sniffing dog.

The Victoria Palace theatre was refurbished for Hamilton (in fact, renovations took them longer than expected, so the first month of performances had to be canceled), and the interior is truly beautiful, albeit the theatre itself is in one of the less nice parts of town, right next to Victoria Station. We bought a program and made our way to our seats, which were, as expected, nothing short of incredible.

I’d kept away from clips of the London cast, but I hadn’t been able to avoid some of the raving reviews; it’s supposedly the best cast since the original one, much better than the current Broadway cast and the ones touring the US, and I don’t have a direct comparison, but I’d have to agree; I had goosebumps from the opening number throughout the entire first act. Alexander Hamilton was played by 26-year-old, Jamaican-Irish, and fresh out of theatre school Jamael Westman. While it took some getting used to at first because he’s as different to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton as he could possibly be (a lot taller with short curly hair), all that passed the moment he opened his mouth to sing – he oozed determination and nailed the role from the get-go, while still making it his own and not just emulating Lin, who left big shoes to fill. Tarinn Callender (Mulligan/Madison) and Cleve September (Laurens/Philip) resembled their original counterparts not only vocally, but even physically, to an almost eerie degree. Obioma Ugoala’s Washington performance was also really close to Christopher Jackson’s, except with more hair (they could be related though!). Giles Terera’s Aaron Burr can’t really be faulted (he was good, but he played Burr very differently, and has a speech impediment most noticeable when he talks, although his singing was fine), but I suppose that if I missed any one original cast member the most, I’ve got to go with Leslie Odom Jr.

Here’s their performance of the opening number at this year’s Olivier Awards:

One thing I noticed is that the two bars pause after “immigrants – we get the job done” – weren’t kept – there was no discernible crowd reaction, unlike the thunderous applause that follows that line in the States (they did keep the pause after the first “Alexander Hamilton” though). They also all seemed to enunciate everything a lot more clearly than the American cast(s), at times the songs felt slightly slowed down, even – perhaps so that the actor’s natural British accents wouldn’t bleed into their performance? In any case, I caught every single word, even in the rapid-fire raps. This brings me to Jason Pennycooke’s Lafayette – when you’ve got Daveed Diggs as your reference point, everyone’s going to be a bit of a disappointment, but I didn’t entirely warm up to this small and skinny Marquis. I wasn’t sold on his casting until Act 2, when he absolutely killed it in his role as Jefferson and was doubtlessly the best thing about the second half of the show, for me! The Schuyler sisters were all great – Rachel John’s soaring vocals gave Renée Elise Goldsberry’s a run for their money, and I actually preferred Rachelle Ann Go’s Eliza to Phillipa Soo’s. Peggy/Maria were played by a Filipina actress as well, Christine Allado – who’d toured as a duettist with Andrea Bocelli on one of his more recent tours, so you know how good she was! Michael Jibson’s King George was also as far removed from Jonathan Groff’s as it can possibly be, but fantastic in its own right – pompous, threatening, ridiculous, and utterly delightful. I was sitting next to two kids and they were so into it, I might’ve felt a pang in my uterus. I feel like his parts worked even better in London than in the American productions, for the sheer fact that the US is just so far removed from even the idea of a monarchy, while in London, King George III’s great-great-great-great-granddaughter Queen Elizabeth II still reigns, so the mockery hits a lot closer to home.

As wonderful as each single cast member was, though, musicals, and I’d argue Hamilton more so than others, thrive on a team effort, and the interplay of the entire ensemble makes or breaks a performance. There were two or three dancers that stood out to me as being especially graceful, but I’m a sucker for large, choreographed ensemble numbers, and those songs were my favorites, as expected – My Shot, Right Hand Man, Yorktown, and Non-Stop being my highlights in Act 1. The whole experience was so electrifying and enveloping that I even enjoyed the songs I normally skip because they bore me, That Would Be Enough and Dear Theodosia being prime examples. When intermission rolled around, we didn’t even leave our seats – A. had tears streaming down his face from sheer happiness because it was the best thing he’s ever seen (that’s a direct quote), and I felt as out-of-breath as if I’d just run a 5k race.

As I’ve already mentioned, Jason Pennycooke’s Thomas Jefferson was a riot – he was the single best thing about an otherwise very emotionally taxing Act 2. The cabinet meetings were absolutely insane to watch, Say No To This was so infuriating it made me want to stand up and scream “NO!”, and The Room Where It Happens was the highlight of the entire evening for me. The tears started coming not long after; Burn was hard to watch (I felt the waves of cold hate washing off Eliza in a way I never quite felt from that song before), and my eyes never had a chance to fully dry starting with the Stay Alive reprise. The Hamilton/Burr duel was so well done – I knew how the slow-motion/freeze-frame effect would be accomplished thanks to the bootleg, but it was still heart-wrenching to see it play out. I loved how Eliza got to be front and center stage as the lights went out, and there was a lot of sniffling or full-on-ugly crying going on around us.

I can honestly say that it was the single best thing I’ve ever seen on any stage, anywhere, and I would not hesitate to see it again – when I mentioned that we were going to see it to a London friend of mine, she remarked that she knows “people who would sell their mothers to score tickets”, so if you ever have the chance to be in the room where it happens, please go for it – it’s one of the rare instances where the hype is fully justified.