Hamilton (Lewis) continues at the King’s Head Theatre, London until 22 September 2018.
Star rating: one star ★ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩
Purportedly a pastiche of Broadway and West End smash hit Hamilton, the writers of Hamilton (Lewis) claim that the inspiration for their musical came from people tweeting that they thought Lin-Manuel Miranda’s show about Founding Father Alexander Hamilton was actually about racing driver Lewis.
You don’t have to look too closely to see that the Tweets they cite weren’t exactly being serious. But perhaps the writers of this show, which has opened in London following a run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, have difficulty identifying humour. Certainly sitting through this sorry hour would seem to confirm that hypothesis.
The book, by King’s Head executive director Fiona English, posits that Lewis Hamilton (Letitia Hector) is a good racing driver who, as he ascends through the ranks, finds his head turned by Pussycat Dolls lead singer Nicole Scherzinger (Liberty Buckland), while maintaining a racing rivalry with fellow driver Fernando Alonso (Louis Mackrodt).
As a narrative, the racing element is pretty devoid of tension – so much so that English focuses almost exclusively on Hamilton’s first year in F1. She is far more interested in Lewis and Nicole’s relationship – and even then, any semblance of dramatic interest comes from the Scherzinger side. It’s helped by a spirited performance by Buckland which gives a far better impression of Nicole than the script would otherwise allow.
Sadly, as a musical David Eaton’s music and lyrics disappoint substantially. An opening mea culpa explains that Miranda took four and a half years to come up with his Tony Award-winning smash, so the songs in Hamilton (Lewis) will not be to the same standard. But the resulting songs and part raps sometimes feel as if a timescale of four and a half days could have accommodated both the songwriting and an extended weekend city break.
It is only when the musical temporarily forgets to be a parody and stops trying to be a comedy, that the show shows any glimpse of what it could be. Hector and Mackrodt share some intimate moments of genuine emotion – but then there’s another joke about the first two syllables of “Pussycat Dolls” being slang for female body parts, and the whole thing resorts to sub-undergraduate humour once again.
In the opening introduction, English has her characters explain that, if the audience knows neither about Hamilton nor about Formula 1, they might need plenty of booze. They are not the only ones. The last of a series of self-deprecating jokes at the play’s expense attempts to justify the play’s lack of a satisfying ending: “That’s what happens when you come up with the title first,” says Hector’s Hamilton.
The trouble with self-deprecating humour is that it is funny only when it’s only partially true. A little more thought might have resulted in a less slapdash musical or encouraged the writers to come up with a better idea. Either scenario would be an improvement upon Hamilton (Lewis).
Scott Matthewman
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