MY HISTORY WITH LES MISERABLES
I fully intend to watch the new Les Miserables movie and write a review. However, my thoughts on Les Miserables are far too many for me to adequately confine them to a single blog post.
Les Miserables, for me, is more than just a musical. It is a part of my past, a part of who I am. My parents went to see the original show when it first came to Chicago (I believe this was in 1988). They fell in love with the story and brought home the record (yes, I said “record”) recording of the music. I grew up listening to the music. My cousins and siblings and I all memorized the lyrics. We all wanted to be Cosette, singing “Castle on a Cloud,” or... when we were feeling more adventurous, Gavroche with his “Little People” solo.
When I was eleven years old, my parents took me into Chicago to see Les Mis as a birthday present. I remember it as clearly as if it happened yesterday. The revolving stage. My mom whispering to me, explaining what was going on whenever I got confused. The story. The music. Oh! The music! It was like listening to the record... but so much better!
A year or two later, I tackled the book. Yes, I was twelve/thirteen. Yes, it’s an enormous book. I’ve always been an avid reader, though, and while I struggled with a lot of it, I made it through, and even enjoyed it for the most part.
I watched the 10th Anniversary performance over and over again when it aired on PBS, my mom taped it on a VHS and we would watch it together and dream about getting tickets to go to London for the 25th anniversary show.
I watched the Liam Neeson movie, and loved it, but wished they would do a version in full-on musical style. When the Phantom of the Opera movie came out with all the music, I remember thinking and saying, “I wish they would do this with Les Mis!”
In January of 2004, I went to London for a J-Term college class and we were able to get tickets to see Les Mis in a theater in Picadilly Circus for super cheap. Despite the low ticket price (14-16 pounds!), they were fabulous seats. The performance transported me back to that first time I ever saw the show. As we were settling into our seats, I discovered that my friends and my then-fiance (we got married the following summer) were unfamiliar with the play and so I spent the moments while we were waiting for the show to begin outlining the basic premise and plot-line of the story to them.
When the 25th Anniversary DVD came out, my dad sent it to me for my birthday.
Last February, Les Mis came to our fair, Southern city and we jumped at the chance to go. And while I don’t appreciate some of the changes the performance has undergone in their latest “revamping/modernizing” of some of the aspects, it was still a wonderful show and I enjoyed it immensely.
However, despite all of this history I have with the musical, despite its being my favorite musical (and I like a lot of musicals), and despite my own wishes for a movie-adaptation-with-music... I have not yet seen the new movie adaptation of this, one of my favorite stories and musicals.
Why?
That’s a post for another day. Tune in next week and I’ll answer that question.
Don’t forget to swing by on Friday for another Featured Artist Interview with thriller/suspense author Alex Sheridan.