Summary
Musically, the two male leads are evenly matched although given different tasks. With much of the dialogue in nearly tuneless recitative, we get a measure of voices' different strengths before they soar to the heights. Our sentiments belong first to the saintly, misused convict Jean Valjean, who interacts with everyone in the narrative. Tad Wilson's silvery tenor fills out his affecting solos, "Soliloquy," "Who Am I?" and "Bring Him Home," rising to lyrical falsetto. Shambling and fair-haired Wilson strikes a dramatic presence that implies he feels the blows of injustice but still has the strength to soldier on. As his opposite number Javert, Christopher Carl's bass-baritone, especially in his solo "Stars," wins applause and approval even when his villainous character does not.
In [Victor Hugo]'s novel the Thenardiers were filthy degenerates, grasping, vicious, stingy, dishonest and smelly. Here they are welcome comic relief in a show filled with injustice and passion. Fagin in Lionel Bart's Oliver! was no doubt an antecedent, but we have more fun with two such characters, Monsieur (Jerry Jay Cranford) and Madame (Joanne Baum) Thenardier. Their show-stopping number "Master of the House," is supposed to be vulgar and rollicking, like "Gee, Officer Krupke" in West Side Story, but it's one of three musical numbers in Les Miz that's still in your head an hour after you leave the theater. [Claude-Michel Schonberg] and [Alain Boublil] knew what they had in it and prudently quote from it in later scenes. Cranford, not incidentally, also serves as assistant director of this production.The Thenardiers' daughter Eponine (mezzo Liana Hunt) grows up with [Cosette] (soprano Lauren Hauser) and they begin to drive the action even before the end of the first act. Both of them are in love with the same student, Marius (tenor Ernie Pruneda). The two grown women, together with Marius and Jean Valjean, join in the quartet "In My Life," and later with Marius in the trio "A Heart Full of Love," one of the songs that has had long life outside the show. Marius will favor Cosette (so often the fate of sopranos), but not before Eponine has the second act's opening solo, "On My Own," another audience favorite.See the full content of this document
Extract
Hugo-a-Go-Go
Hugo-A-Go-Go
Auburn's Merry-Go-Round scores with the blockbuster musical version of Victor Hugo's Les MiserablesJust booking the musical behemoth Les Miserables is the first victory for Auburn's Merry-Go-Round Playhouse. Road companies have brought Les Miz to town, and high school companies have been doing cut-down, junior varsity versi...See the full content of this document
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