This week, the West End of London was abuzz with an unlikely name: Alexander Hamilton.
While you would be forgiven for thinking a hip-hop musical tracing the life of a founding father of the United States would be a tough sell for British audiences, it was clear as the crowds poured out of the preview shows that Hamilton fever had already gone transatlantic.
Abby Feltis, 20, was one of the many still wiping away tears as she left the theatre. “To be here tonight is everything,” she said. “I’ve listened to the soundtrack so many times I know every word to every song, but I couldn’t have imagined what it would be like to see it performed. It defied every expectation.”
Her praise was echoed by Sarah White. “It met the hype and more,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for a year to come and see it and it absolutely blew me away. The casting was perfect, the staging was flawless, the choreography and the musicians were insane. Just incredible really.”
Since it first opened in New York in 2015, Hamilton has become a great theatrical success story. First conceived by the writer Lin-Manuel Miranda as a hip-hop mixtape based on the life of Alexander Hamilton, a man known to most simply as the face on the $10 bill, it grew into one of the most ambitious and record-breaking productions ever staged on Broadway, subsequently winning 11 Tony awards and the 2016 Pulitzer prize for drama.
Yet while it has been sold out on Broadway since it opened, the big question was whether a show about the American revolution, the drafting of the American constitution and subsequent quarrels over policy and ideology – often told through the medium of the rap battle – would be quite as well received by British audiences.
The show was brought to the West End with an entirely new British cast, fronted by the relative unknown 25-year-old Jamael Westman in the title role. However, while the history of Hamilton, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr might be little known in the UK, London audiences this week insisted nothing had been lost on them.
“It doesn’t matter that it’s a quintessentially American story, it’s also a universal, democratic story and with all the songs about immigration, it’s also a really relevant story today,” said Natalie Braid, 25. “We need way more shows like that – an intersection of the entire theatre community on one stage. It really felt like the future.”
The show’s emphasis on Hamilton’s immigrant status – “a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman”, as the opening song states, who went on to be a founding father of the United States – has been seen by many as particularly important in the current political climate in both the US and UK.
The greatest cheer of the night came after the line: “Immigrants, they get the job done.” At a time when a lack of diversity in the arts is an ongoing issue in the UK, the pointedly diverse casting of Hamilton – with black, Asian and mixed-race actors filling almost all the roles – ensured that it felt as groundbreaking on the West End stage as it did when it made its Broadway debut in 2015.
Kirsty Lafferty, 28, pointed out that Hamilton could be seen as British history as much as American, for it was against British rule that Hamilton and his revolutionaries were fighting.
One of the most popular characters in the Broadway original was King George III, written as a pompous pantomime figure with some of the funniest lines. Miranda said he was intrigued to see how British audiences would respond to their former monarch being portrayed as a “cartoonish villain.”
However, he need not have worried, as George III’s appearance is already being cited as a highlight of the West End version. “British people are really good at laughing at ourselves, so obviously everyone loved King George being ridiculous,” said Lafferty. “And it’s even funnier because I think that’s still the impression some Americans have of English people to this day, as these camp, pompous royals.”
Hannah Gregory, 29, agreed. “Yes, it’s American history but it’s just a really good, juicy story and British audiences will probably take different things from it. I thought the King George element was hysterical – probably funnier for us than an American audience – so tonight obviously proved you don’t have to be American to get everything out of Hamilton.”
The show’s profile was underlined by the big names who turned out for the early previews, among them the former US secretary of state John Kerry, the Mad Men actor Jon Hamm and the comedy writer Stephen Merchant.
For Feltis, an American studying in the UK, the show was an antidote to the “closed-minded”, anti-immigrant sentiment of Donald Trump’s America. “Hamilton is the history of America we should be telling,” she said. “It’s a show that came at the right time. Watching it really gave me hope. Being in the audience tonight felt like being part of history.”
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