主人公アレクサンダー・ハミルトンはアメリカ合衆国建国の父の一人、初代大統領ジョージ・ワシントンの右腕と呼ばれた男です。 テーマは「The story of America then, told by America now」。 訳すと、過去のアメリカの物語を今のアメリカが語る、といったような文言になります。 アメリカを作ったうちの一人である彼の波瀾万丈な生涯をヒップホップやR&B、ラップなど典型的なブロードウェイミュージカルとは少し違ったテイストで語る、史実ベースの物語です。 Disney＋などで日本語字幕付きで配信されているらしいので、是非、是非ご覧ください。
Does everyone have a dream show they’d like to go watch live?
For me, that was the all-famous musical Hamilton, ever since middle school.
My best friend then introduced me to the soundtrack of Hamilton, and ever since that day I had been waiting for the perfect occasion to watch Hamilton being performed at the theatres.
And last week was my chance!
The Hamilton cast had come to downtown Toronto on tour, and so I secured myself a seat.
To be straight to the point, it was incredible.
Of course, the performance was amazing, it isn’t a Broadway favourite for no reason.
The performers were great, the singing was beautiful, and everything was fantastic.
But more importantly for me, it gave me such vivid flashbacks from when I was in middle school.
After my then-best friend introduced me to Hamilton, we listened to the soundtrack together so many times, and spent hours talking about what song was our favourite and why.
Further, as I was a theatre IGCSE kid, every student in my class knew about Hamilton.
What theatre student doesn’t know about Hamilton?
And one day after class rehearsals for a play, all the students gathered around and started singing “My Shot”, which is the 3rd song in Hamilton.
There was a kid doing voice percussions, we were sitting around in a circle, and chanting the lyrics to “My Shot” together.
It wasn’t a good performance, if anything there were more than 10 students trying to sing a fast-paced song together so it sounded very messy, but it was one of those memories that stayed with me.
When “My Shot” started playing at the theatres, my brain just jumped back to that day.
Not to sound overly dramatic but it felt like those memories inside me were singing together with the performers.
During the interval, a couple of ladies sitting next to me were talking about how they couldn’t hear some words because of how fast the raps and lyrics were.
It was only then I realised that I didn’t find that as trouble because I knew the lyrics.
I don’t remember them exactly and definitely can’t recall them out of the blue, but my brain knew the words.
It was quite surreal. I was watching the story of America then, told by America now; and remembering the times back then, and how it connected to me now.
