Overrated, overpriced, overcooked.
A show shouldn’t be running night after night for years in a row. This is akin to American television shows that run thirty or forty seasons as they get progressively worse. After the original Lin-Manuel Miranda left the show, it should have been a cue to move it off-Broadway. But no, the capitalist machine had to milk every dollar to of it until pruned into a husk of a name. Shows, like holidays, should be seasonal. New Year’s is time for La Bohème, June for a Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Christmas for the Nutcracker. July would be a good time for Hamilton and 1776.
I have never seen a music-based show across Berlin, Ottawa, New York, London, and Hong Kong where I had the urge to leave within the first five minutes of the first verse. The performance was adequate, but it wasn’t $200 plus taxes and fees for the worst seats adequate. I could get the best seats at the legendary Hamburg Opera for just €119 including taxes and fees, the cheapest tickets go for just €7. The show was worth about $50 including taxes and fees.
It was a low-cost production on a shallow stage with guests placed in uncomfortable seats. There wasn’t a backdrop change, there was no live orchestra, and there wasn’t even a curtain. The worst part was sharing a room with hundreds of uncultured Americans, dozens of which carried their potbellies, held beer in one had and popcorn in the other, and wore baseball caps during the show. If you don’t respect yourself, at least respect others in the venue.
Without a proper bar area downstairs, people had to consume food and drinks inside the music hall, something inconceivable in other parts of the world. The audience clapped at the end of every scene instead just at the end of every act, breaking focus from the show. It’s not just an American issue. I was at a rendition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in Canada and three quarters of the audience didn’t know when the music ended, applauding at every rest that lasted two bars or more.
I’ll reconsider watching a show in North America when they build a wall against Mexico that lasts a thousand years, the hanging gardens of San Francisco, the great Pyramids of Las Vegas, Colossus at Boston, and their yogurt starts growing mould.
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