Les Miserables review

This is a story that I could probably see retold a million times and never get bored. I love Les Mis!

Jean Valjean was so much better as Valjean than he had been the night before as Captain Von Trapp. I heard a lady behind us say that the local newspaper did an interview with him, and he said that he was trying to play von Trapp very much as a "captain" (how von Trapp was described in real life). I kind of get that now, but it was kind of hard to see why Maria would fall in love with him because he was just so dry in that role.

But, as Valjean he was excellent! Beautiful voice, great acting. Overall, the voices were superior in Les Mis. Javert and Marius were absolutely perfect, as were the female leads - other than Fantine forgot one of her lines once. THen I got thinking, how can you really get all the way through these shows (and some actors are in both, so they have a lot to learn!) and NOT forget something!

Morgan and Elise also liked it. I had tried to explain things to them beforehand since it has some more adult themes, and they seemed to get it okay. The only thing I would get asked is about some of the innuendo during the "lovely ladies" song. Morgan and I had already had a bit of a talk about that when we went to Vegas to pick Doug up on Saturday night. We were there about an hour early so I decided to go show her the volcano at Mirage. Traffic on the Strip of course was moving at a snail's pace, and we had the luck of being next to a truck with photos of nearly-nude women on the side and a logo that said something like, "Call us, and we'll have a girl to you in 20 minutes!". This is something new to Vegas since I've been there - it used to be that you'd only be handed this stuff if you were walking down the street. Now all you have to do is sit in your car! Arghh...Oh, and the volcano wasn't even working! They are doing more construction on it. There was a sign that said, "Our sleeping giant will reawake in late 2008". Oh well.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Les Mis was really fun. Very talented cast. It was fun to see some of the same people from the night before and compare the characters. One good example is the lady who played Mother Abbess (the one who sings "Climb Every Mountain") in SOM. She was Madame Thenardier (a very raucous character for those who haven't seen it) in Les Mis and was excellent. Some other duplicates were Max/Thenardier, Rolfe/Marius, and the Nazi guy (can't remember his name)/Javert. I think it's great that these people can do these duplicate roles and do it so well.

Very fun night for the Gardner girls! Go see it if you are in the area, and I would say if you are trying to choose between the two - see Les Mis because it's not performed a whole lot, whereas you can see Sound of Music on film and the film version is awesome (who can outdo Julie Andrews?).

Now cleaning up and heading up to the UC.