The Play's The Thing... Sort Of
This play has been around for a while. The first musical theater version of Victor Hugo's novel was done in 1980 and the version that we'll be discussing was premiered in London in 1985. By the late '80's, it had come to the United States and that is when my family saw it. You may have seen it before. You may have heard your friends talk about "Lay Mizzzz." Chances are, your high school put on a production of it. A couple of years ago, I was in a volunteer theater troupe and we finished our summer Sing For Something with a few catchy tunes from the musical. (I only refrained from presenting the fact that I couldn't sing in it because they made me concertmistress and the violinists have a really cool part.) They've done concerts of it at the Royal Albert Hall. There are, to date, 25 international productions of it that have been done, from six Japanese casts to the Israeli adaptation. Summary:
Les Mis was everywhere, even before Hugh Jackman got attached to the project. My father is possibly the biggest
Les Mis fan that there is. It's religious with him and when asked to speak over the pulpit in our church, he'll regularly relate whatever the topic is back to this book. So yeah, we saw it as a family when I was 9 and even though I didn't get half the jokes until a few years later, I knew enough to like it. Forbidden Broadway is a fantastic project and they did a very funny parody of this. They make fun of the fact that you have to be a masochist to audition, that the poor male leads can't possibly hit the notes and that it's way too popular for its own good. My favorite parts are from the final song: "Do you hear the people sing? Singing the hit songs from
Les Mis! It is the best show of a classic since they modernized
The Wiz!" or "Even the great Andrew Lloyd Webber Wished the songs were really his!" or "No more Gershwin, no more Kern We don't need old shows anymore We'll set ablaze and burn Most Every Steven Sondheim Score!" So, not only does this movie have to live up to the expectations of the bibliophiles who have read it (Unabridged, I hope!), but it has to put up with the musical theater enthusiasts who will sniff that no one's as good an Eponine as Lea Salonga or something like that. I myself had the same standards that I used for
The Phantom of the Opera--I would reserve judgment until I found out if it made me cry in the same places. Needless to say, there was a lot of pressure on this film's cast and crew from a worldwide and slightly insane audience.