TODAY x TMRW

Hamilton felt revolutionary in 2015 — but it strikes a different chord today

In a way, the production’s excellence is what ironically lends itself to critique. It does what it means to so well — that is, encourage audiences to empathize with its characters — that it obscures that they can never be wholly divorced from the real people they are based on. Even though the music is great, even though the performances are exquisite, even though the production itself is sublime, Hamilton will always be a cast of Black and brown people battling for space in a conversation that intentionally excluded them, rather than one about the people it excluded. That can’t be helped now — and it doesn’t necessarily need to be — but it is a critique that will always exist alongside the show’s brilliance