Les Miserables

I first bought tickets to this show as a present to my then girlfriend. That means it has some complicated memories associated with it, but mostly it's just an amazing soundtrack. The day I saw the production was an odd one - an inability to revise led to my wandering out of the library, into Covent Garden, where I bought two pairs of shoes, ate Chinese food and then went to see Les Mis. This is my report:

Les Miserables – 12/03/08

Les Mis has been running 22 years, longer than any other show in the West End, and on a Wednesday night, it was sold out. And with good reason. It is the best show in town. One friend of mine (studying music at Oxford, no less) compares it favourably to a Mozart opera. The sophistication of its plot, the beauty of its solos, the energy of its chorus numbers and the grandeur of its staging put lesser shows to shame. That said, this was a disappointing production.

Many of the performances were remarkably misjudged. Drew Sarich as Valjean was wild eyed and angry, with an accent that wandered around the Atlantic; too immature to be the moral centre of the play. Hans Peter Janssens, meanwhile, had an oddly clipped style as Javert, reducing him from a zealous Angel of Justice to a pedantic bureaucrat, pursuing a 20 year old error in his records. Worse still, he gabbled and garbled many of his lines; certainly he could hit the notes, but even I, who know the soundtrack inside out, had difficulty deciphering some of his key lines. Eponine’s gorgeous number ‘On my own’, meanwhile, was belted out with all the fragile vulnerability of Shirley Bassey.

Oddly, the most convincing performances came from Marius and Cosette. Usually absurdly saccharine and improbable, their story was transformed into a delicate meeting of lovers by the simple expedient of not overacting, amid all the posturing and exhibitionism. Equally marvellous were Chris Vincent and Melanie La Barrie as the Thenardiers, who were as hilariously horrible as they ought to be.

These, though, were the exceptions. The failure of so many of the main characters – all of them with illustrious lists of credits – would seem to point the finger at the musical direction. Whoever was at fault, this was not up to the (admittedly incredibly high) standards of Les Mis.

It is a testament to the show that despite all this, I still came out humming the tunes.