Note: the names of actors listed here are based off of the program. I did not take note if there were any subs performing at the show we went to (other than Javert), so I apologize in advance if I am crediting the wrong people for their performances.
I spent yesterday afternoon at the Bushnell Theater in Hartford, Connecticut watching a performance of one of the most famous musicals of all time, Les Misérables, a fully sung-through show originally written by Claude-Michel Schönberg. The specific version we saw is the touring revival from 2014, directed by Laurence Connor and James Powell. My experience with this show prior to seeing this performance was minimal: I had read the plot summary on Wikipedia back when it was announced that we would be performing the musical this winter here at Cheshire Academy to learn what kid of story it was, but other than hearing from time to time about just how great the show is, that was basically it. Despite my plans, I had yet to even listen to a single song from the soundtrack before seeing this performance, and thus I went in with vague but high expectations.
As I learned shortly after watching the performance, the original novel Les Misérables written by Victor Hugo was based on a real event in French history, the June Rebellion in 1832. In the musical, the second half of Act One shows the build-up to this event, and the two-day rebellion and its immediate aftermath take up most of Act Two; however, the true focus of the story is on the characters that become involved in the tragedy. The large cast includes Jean Valjean (played by Nick Cartell), a former thief turned hardworking, kindhearted, respectable man; Javert (played by Andrew Love, who usually plays the Bishop of Digne), an officer of the law who has made it his life goal to put Jean Valjean to justice; Cosette (played by Jillian Butler), the sweet girl turned young woman Jean Valjean raises after the death of her mother Fantine; Marius (played by Joshua Grosso), an idealistic young man who falls in love with Cosette at first sight and eventually marries her; and quite a few more.
With such a large cast, it is important to make sure that no character feels unimportant, and Les Mis succeeds in this in three ways:
1. It ties its characters together through the story, as was demonstrated in the short descriptions above.
2. When characters disappear from the story, their parting serves as set-up for the next plot points. The Bishop of Digne is only in the prologue but is the one who sets Jean Valjean on the path to becoming a righteous man; Fantine's dying wish is for Jean Valjean to find and raise Cosette; etc.
3. The characters' personal stories all flesh out the world and relate back to the show's main themes, such as love, loss, struggle, freedom, and change.
The actors all gave phenomenal performances, as to be expected out of a professional company like this. In particular, Nick Cartell gave a fittingly passionate and moving performance as Jean Valjean, Andrew Love was very intense and surprisingly sympathetic as Javert, and I enjoyed the vocal variety that Phoenix Best provided as Eponine, even if she was a bit nasally at times. I felt somewhat iffy about the few child actors featured here, though the boy who played Gavroche grew on me in time for his unfortunate death. The pit was incredibly powerful and emotional, yet the singers still managed to rise above it most of the time, getting many of the tunes stuck in my head. The costumes were also very realistic.
This show is very different in scale from the first play I reviewed for this class, the Elm Shakespeare Company's performance of The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet was outdoors and thus had both natural and artificial lighting, which required the show to make more creative use of its artificial lighting to add to the scenes. Les Mis was in a huge beautiful theater where they had full control of lighting, and in comparison, I found the lighting to be atmospheric and overall great but not as unique. The other downside of having a huge theater is that it's much harder to read the actors' facial expressions from a difference, which means certain subtleties can be missed from a distance. However, being in a proper theater did give Les Mis one huge advantage, and that as in the sets. With Romeo and Juliet, everything had to take place on the one large set, and while it was beautiful and worked for the show, Les Mis was visually stunning, with so many different pieces working together to make each location distinct, a necessity for a show with as complex a plot as this. They even made efficient use of a green screen in the background at certain points, such as when Jean Valjean drags Marius through the sewers or when Javert throws himself off a bridge, to make things clearer.
Other than my previously mentioned grievances, the one fault I had with this performance is that it seemed to go too fast at times, or failed to be clear about certain plot points. For example, early in Act Two, Javert goes undercover to sabotage the revolutionaries from the inside, but Mrs. Guarino had to mention to me that it was him before I got it. Similarly, when Jean Valjean shows up to help, it took me more time than it felt like it should have for me to recognize him, even if he was also undercover. These admittedly brief moments of confusion temporarily took me out of the moment, where otherwise the show's immersion was one of its strongest points.
In summary, the Bushnell's performance of Les Misérables was a great pleasure, and I am very glad that it was my first exposure to this wonderful show.
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