Ok, I'll be slightly contrarian. The Hamilton soundtrack took my family by storm several years ago. My oldest heard it, recommended it to us, and all of us listened to the hell out of it for a long time. I couldn't count how many times we've listened to it individually and together on road trips. Any of us can certainly sing along to every line (other than the Lafayette rap LOL).
I definitely think the music is the best thing that's ever been created in musical theater, and it's probably the greatest popular artistic creation in my lifetime. I love it and admire it.
This year, we finally saw it in Atlanta. I managed to "win" the right to drop close to a grand on tickets, and took the kids. It was...fine.
Well, it was more than fine, it was great. We all enjoyed it. I would be happy to go see it five more times. No complaints.
But here's the thing to me...as a musical, to me about 80% of what makes it special and remarkable is there on that soundtrack. If we had never seen it, I'd always really, really want to see it...but now that I've seen it, my love and appreciate for it would be almost the same as if I never had. That's not to say there isn't some really impressive choreography and design, there is, and I'm sure I could pick up more and more with repeated viewings. But the nature of it, with a relatively sparse set design, the extremely dense lyrics, and too much forward propulsion to really allow for major "acting" showcases (including no real belting ballads for the male cast), I don't actually feel like it NEEDS to be seen to be appreciated. It should be seen, and it's worth it, but I don't know that it HAS to be.
Now, someone who was going in cold, or had just not already absorbed every note and word from the soundtrack into their molecular structure might have a totally different opinion. But I felt like I "knew" it going into it, and seeing it live didn't disabuse me of that.
To me, musicals definitely fall along a spectrum like that. My all-time favorite show, and the only one who's soundtrack rivals Hamilton for me, is Jesus Christ Superstar. To me, that show is 90%+ there on the soundtrack. I've seen probably a dozen different versions, between live and taped versions, and at the end of the day there's no way to stage that thing that does justice to the soundtrack (although I have my favorites). I think the soundtrack to staging value is even much more slanted toward soundtrack than Hamilton, but at least JCS has "Gethsemane", which if you see a GREAT rendition of it live is really amazing and spine tingling, and outshines anything you get from the soundtrack. I don't know if Hamilton had that one number like that, that only live does it real justice, and certainly not from the male cast.
On the other end of the spectrum are things that to me have almost all their value in seeing it live. The most obvious example to me is Phantom of the Opera. It is a great spectacle, but unless you REALLY like fake opera, that soundtrack is about 6 minutes of amazing wrapped by two cds worth of slogging. You can't make a lot of sense out of it from the soundtrack alone, and most of it's boring as hell without the visuals. You really have to see that on stage to appreciate it in my opinion.
There's plenty of things like that as well. Jersey Boys for example...the soundtrack is just covers of Four Seasons tunes. Ok, I guess? But seeing the "performances" is everything with that show (which I liked a lot but I also think pretty well sucks, and yes I know it doesn't make sense).
I think either way is fine, I just thought Hamilton fell a little bit on the "seeing it live optional" side considering what it costs to actually see it live.
