I bet the good folk of “Shamilton” are going to wake up tomorrow morning and think “you know what I want to read? A review from the mother of a teenager we called a #*>%ing nerd 5 minutes into the show”
Well, their luck is in. For here is that review.
But you know what? Their luck continues to be in. The nerd takes it as the highest compliment in the land to be heckled from the stage and, let’s face it, no one can deny the facts of the matter.
As I write this, he is reading a book about Physics on the Victoria Line. It’s true, we have a nerd.
How did this happen tho? And what even is “Shamilton”? Well, it’s not “Hamilton” and that was the sum of the information we gave Nathan as we prepared for his birthday trip out. We told him to be in Victoria around 5:30 and we would take it from there.
So he and VK travelled in from home, Roo jumped on the Victoria Line from college and I got on the Circle Line from work. Then we all circled Cardinal Place a few times looking for each other before finding each other and going to the same Pizza Express we’d been to on Reuben’s birthday. Which involved a show I have not reviewed yet…I was tired that day, OK?
What the kids and I knew but Nathan did not know was that we were heading for an evening of improvised musical theatre, in a hip hop style that was reminiscent of that show about the founding fathers. I don’t remember its name though.
What’s its name man?
Anyway, to “Shamilton”.
Every show, the performers take an audience suggestion for a historical figures, a celebrity or a fictional character and improvise a 90-minute musical about that person. It sounds impossible but we have just seen it done. I should say, it’s not 90 minutes sung through – there are spoken scenes which, while still improv-ed, require slightly less quick thinking than singing or rapping does. But there are still a lot of musical numbers, fast paced raps and even harmonies. It’s incredible.
First off tho, the warm up. In classic improv style, they took suggestions from the audience of a snack (popcorn), a hobby (knitting), a degree subject (maths), a pet peeve (sniffing) and a scientific formula.
Ah, this is where it might have gone wrong. I’m sure Roo can’t have been the first Physics A Level student to pipe up at this point of the show but still he achieved the “it never normally derails this early” badge and a full verse in the opening song, which included the aforementioned insult. He thought it was hilarious.
If you’re interested, the formula was g=GM/r².
Gravitational acceleration by the way. You knew that already though, right?
So, on with the show! The four audience suggestions which were put to a vote were Tutankhamun, Jared Kushner, Steve Jobs and Charlie Kirk. I think it was to the relief of everyone in the room that the boy pharaoh was chosen over Charlie Kirk. That might have been…too soon.
For once, I don’t need to worry too much about spoilers because the show is different every night…but I also don’t want to give too much away about how it all works. So I’ll tell you bits and pieces and you can probably figure out whether it’s the kind of thing you might enjoy. I should say, the kids were howling with laughter throughout and whooping every time the cast managed to slide into an actual “Hamilton” song (“The Tomb Where it Happens” was a stroke of genius). Characters tonight included rightwing mosquitoes, an anachronistic Cleopatra, a overexcitable cat and Elvis as the Grim Reaper. I imagine this is pretty standard stuff.
All five performers are hugely talented – rapping, singing and acting are all difficult enough without improvising at the same time. I like to make up little songs from time to time but it’s taken me weeks to perfect the lyrics of a “Dear Theodosia” parody and I’m still not happy with it. So to be able to just pull this out of the bag in front of live audience is incredible.
The official “Shamilton” website isn’t the most helpful for knowing which performers we saw – or maybe it just wasn’t loading tonight – but the Other Palace website makes me think that we saw Chris Grace, Allen Lucas, Lily Ludwig, Will Naameh and Raquel Palmas. They played various characters, with Allen Lucas playing it fairly straight as Tutankhamun and Will Naameh grabbing all the laughs as the cat, who had somehow finished medical school by the end of the show. Raquel Palmas played a girlboss version of Cleopatra, who just loved to murder her underlings, and Lily Ludwig was iconic as Mosquito Mosquito, who had been bitten by a radioactive mosquito. She also educated us about the origins of Braille. Chris Grace played everything from Howard Carter’s barber to the moral dilemma-setting Egyptian foreman. I have no idea how they psychically decide who is going to play which role but it all just sort of happens and an impulse decision to rush into a scene to play a cat ended up changing the course of the whole show in some quite unexpected ways.
Even Charlie Kirk got an eventual shout out. Still too soon.
It’s hard to describe exactly what happened in that room but we grinned a lot, we laughed a lot and we learnt a bit about the life of Tutankhamun. And Braille. It was insane, it was mildly inappropriate for the child in the front row (the age rating is 12+ and I think that’s probably fair) and it was very, very entertaining. The cast even went out to the front of the theatre straight after the show to pose for photos so we didn’t have to wait around in a dank alleyway waiting for stage door. Hooray! It was an experience quite unlike any other we’ve been to and you know, we go to a lot of theatre. If unhinged historical hiphop improv sounds like your cup of ass’s milk then you should definitely check it out.
“Shamilton” is on at the Other Palace until 20th September. For tickets and more info click here
