Les Mis: You Had Me at the Prologue

My most memorable birthday is my eighth. Not to say it's all been downhill from there, but I can tell you most things about that day. I can describe my dress, the restaurant where we ate in Omaha, and my joy in feeding the swans in the Old Market. Most importantly, however, it was the day my parents took me to see my first professional show: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I won't pretend this show is my favorite, but it will always have a special place for me because it was the first. Similarly, I'll always remember that the first show I saw in New York (ON BROADWAY (squee!)) was Phantom of the Opera (no idea why Andrew Lloyd Webber gets to be involved in both of these important firsts). That also is not a show I'm super fond of today, but I can tell you of many afternoons where I sat at the piano and played and sang through its entire songbook.

Somewhere in between those two important firsts, I saw Les Misérables and it changed the course of my life. I don't mean that in an overused, meaningless way: I was in eighth grade, the first chord of the orchestra brought tears to my eyes, and I said (whether aloud or in my head I don't know) "This is what I want to do in my life." Granted, in eighth grade, I thought I would try to get a job playing my flute for the orchestra--but the band geek in me didn't win out. Theatre has become the most consistent passion in my life and I revisited that this evening when I saw the most recent incarnation of Les Misérables on its national tour.

Les Misérables
Music by Claude-Michel Schonberg, Lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer, Original French text by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel
Orpheum Theatre, Minneapolis
Wednesday, July 31, 2013

The thing is, I can't even tell you how many times I've seen Les Mis on stage. It is a show that, whenever it's around and I have time, I'll go see. I didn't buy tickets to see this particular tour, but when I didn't have very much to do on this Wednesday and I got another Facebook reminder that rush tickets were available, I went.

Mostly I was annoyed by the crowd before the show even started. Statements like "Oh, this is that movie with Wolverine. I didn't know they made it into a musical" and "I don't know how this Javert could be as good as Russell Crowe" made me want to punch my fellow theatre-goers prior to taking my seat. I didn't. And I don't espouse violence. But, honestly. When I took my seat, I remembered why I don't like seeing touring productions very much. People who never go to the theatre and subsequently assume it's like seeing a movie come out of the woodwork...and always sit near me. They constantly whisper to each other, update Facebook, and critique the performance on stage while it is happening. I have no problem with the critiquing, but keep it in your head and off your phone until intermission. It turns out that most of the people here didn't come to hear your old-lady-church-whisper about singing "I Dreamed a Dream" when you were in high school, ma'am. But I digress.

Cool projections (particularly during the sewer scene) aside, I don't like this current staging of Les Mis as much as the original turntable. It feels too slick and stripped down, unlike the grandiose, ever-changing staging of the original. I'm sure this is more cost-effective while touring, and it was certainly still very impressive (the thirty-person cast is massive by today's standards), but the original staging's overwhelming spectacle seemed to fit the massive scope of the story and Hugo's novel more effectively. This opinion probably has too much to do with my emotional attachment to this show, but I'm OK with that; I know my childlike disbelief at the sheer size of the set has stayed with me. When the two giant halves of the barricades folded down at the top of Act Two, there were no words to describe my wonder.

The faces of today's eighth graders will undoubtedly be filled with as much visible awe as mine upon first experiencing this production. True to form, I cried through the first fifteen minutes of Act One before I pulled myself together. I thought I was all cried out until "A Little Fall of Rain"--I've always most closely identified with Éponine--and then I cried from "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" (beautifully staged) pretty much through the end.

If you've always loved Les Misérables, this national tour will not disappoint. If you've never seen it, the spectacle will overwhelm (but you should probably read the synopsis in the program before the curtain--some of the lyrics were difficult to understand). If you think you're going to a movie and will see Hugh Jackman or Russell Crowe or Anne Hathaway, let me suggest Redbox or Netflix. The rest of us will thank you for not talking through the performance. Enjoy your phone and conversation on your couch at home--or put your phone away (just until intermission!) and allow the performances to overwhelm you.