Todrick Hall's Midnight Reinvents Slavery-Era Romance — and Misses

Todrick Hall's off-Broadway musical Midnight, which imagines a doomed interracial love affair during US slavery in the 1860s, has drawn a sharp verdict from the Guardian's critic: the show bills itself as "completely original," and that originality is exactly what sinks it.

The review, published 6 November, frames the problem through a comparison. During the intermission of Midnight, a woman sitting behind the critic praised the show and compared it to Hamilton. On the surface, the comparison holds. Midnight also has a diverse cast with stunning vocals and a story that reimagines a period of American history.

What's the difference from Hamilton?

The mechanism matters here. Hamilton's creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, built his musical on source material — the 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. Hall, who wrote, directed and stars in Midnight, eschewed that step entirely, according to a Ticketmaster interview the review cites.

That's where the trouble starts. Midnight aims to focus on the intimate lives of enslaved people, the critic writes, and it "deviates so far from the mark that it seemed the bull's eye was somewhere outside the theatre."

What is Midnight actually about?

The premise is a formulaic star-crossed-lovers story, updated to explore a queer relationship during the time of enslavement:

• Rail, an enslaved man played by Hall himself, falls in love with Richard, a member of the wealthy planter class.
• They grow close after Richard "rents" Rail from Rail's owner, Charlotte.
• Rail is already in a relationship with Lily Rose, an enslaved woman.
• Richard is engaged to Scarlet, a southern belle who needs to secure her family's financial future through marriage.

It's a recognizable shape — doomed lovers kept apart by circumstance — transposed onto one of the darkest periods of American history.

Why doesn't Hall's usual method work here?

Hall's track record explains the ambition. A singer, choreographer and theatre actor, he has spent years repurposing classics like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast through a queer lens. His method is deft remixing: he folds modern cultural references — Beyoncé's music, or the tensions within current-day gay communities — into familiar source material.

The review's argument is that this method collapses when the source material is real history rather than a fairy tale. In Midnight, Hall reworks the past and creates his own fantasy that neglects the social realities of its characters.

What does this change for musical theatre?

For audiences, the review functions as a buyer's warning: stunning vocals and a diverse cast don't substitute for historical grounding when the subject is slavery. For creators, it sets a benchmark — Hamilton worked because Miranda anchored invention in a researched biography, and Midnight shows what happens when the anchor is dropped.

The production is currently running off-Broadway, and Hall remains its writer, director and star. Whether the show responds to this line of criticism — or finds an audience that disagrees with it — will shape how the queer-historical musical, still a rare form, develops next.