New York abstains (courteously)

So I've spent the last week ruminating on how and why I hated the ending of Hamilton, how Who Lives... would be more to my liking if it was less laudatory, and I came around to thinking about the ending of 1776.

1776 can be summed up as "During the American revolutionary war, the obnoxious and disliked John Adams attempts to get the Continental Congress to agree that the colonies should become independent from England." It takes in an audience who all know what happened and manages to make the whole thing very suspenseful.

Now, Hamilton is a biographical story, and 1776 takes place over, like, two months, so it's very different beasts, but it amuses me that 1776 begins with a song about how people don't like John Adams, the protagonist :P

But the endings is where I think my opinion lies. Because if Hamilton ends with The World Was Wide Enough, the way I wanted it to, first I think that song would need to be longer. But it would end the show on something of a wistful note. Who Lives then comes in to be like "but it was fine! Hamilton was awesome and his widow did awesome things in the 50 years she lived after he was gone, which was longer than she was married to him, but anyway it was totally all for him."

1776 ends... I want to say happily? But if someone came in and said "no it does not end happily", I would not argue. 1776 ends with John Adam agreeing to remove a condemnation of slavery from the Declaration of Independence, and meanwhile they still have to win the war, which they are losing. So the declaration is passed, but that is nowhere near the end. I guess I'd say it ends solemnly, with the weight of all that happened finally catching up with a show that begins by shouting at someone to sit down.

And probably 1776 gets away with its ending because of the assumption that the audience does know what happens next. It can be like "and then it was signed and it's still ominous" and then fade to painting.

Did Hamilton want to end with the assurance that Hamilton's legacy continued, because it assumed (likely correctly) that the audience didn't know what it was? So much of Hamilton is focused on legacy (planting seeds you never get to see) and making a name in history, so I guess it wants to reiterate that his footsteps in the sand weren't washed away after his death. But if so, I'd think it would go more into what the actual things he accomplished were, instead of treating it all very shallowly.

But still. I wish Hamilton had been brave enough to end with Burr, and embrace the kind of ending that 1776 had. If you wanna write Eliza back into the narrative, please do it earlier, thanks.



This entry was originally posted at https://lannamichaels.dreamwidth.org/1133669.html.