NEW SPIN ON LES MIZ
Updated show heads to NAC
To the barricades! The protests are coming!
I’m referring, of course, to the ones in Les Misérables, Victor Hugo’s great slab of a historical novel set against the background of youth-driven armed insurrection on the streets of 19thcentury Paris.
This week Broadway Across Canada, in association with Evenko, is bringing the show’s latest incarnation to the National Arts Centre.
This “definitive” touring version, with new orchestrations and set designs, was launched in 2009 to celebrate the show’s 25th anniversary since it opened on Broadway.
Show co-creator Alain Boublil spoke to Postmedia News from New York, where he and Schönberg are busy working on a remount of their 1990s musical Martin Guerre.
He was eager to describe the spectacular new look of Les Miz.
But first I asked him to cast his mind back nearly four decades to talk about the origins of what was to become the world’s biggest musical.
“(Show co-creator) Claude-Michel (Schönberg) and myself had written our first musical, La Révolution Française (1973), and we were looking for our next big project,” Boublil recalls. “I was in London and I decided to go and see Oliver!, and when I saw the Artful Dodger walk on stage, he made me think of Gavroche (the street urchin from Les Misérables). Suddenly it felt like I had a complete cacophony in my head, on the one hand watching Oliver!, which I was bowled over by, and at the same time seeing the characters of Cosette, Fantine, Valjean, Javert in the Paris streets.
“I came out of the theatre with one obsession — to go and look at the novel. After that, I discussed it with Claude-Michel, and he said: ‘Let’s start working on it tomorrow.’ ”
The rest, of course, is big, brash, multi-award-winning (140 plus!) history, with heroic convict-turned-mayor-turned-fugitive Jean Valjean and his adopted daughter Cosette getting caught up in the failed July Revolution of 1832 while trying to stay one step ahead of villainous police inspector Javert.
Speaking of failed revolutions, I mention to Boublil that I first attended Les Miz in Manchester in 1992, when gremlins sabotaged the famously revolving set, resulting in producer Cameron Mackintosh apologizing from the stage and inviting the audience back the following night.
“Yes, I have vivid memories of that,” Boublil laughs ruefully.
Which bring us to the new-look Les Miz, which has dispensed with the revolve and instead uses layered state-of-the-art projections to conjure up life in 1830s Paris.
“This is a completely re-con--
ceived version,” explains Boublil.
“The whole renovation came from using Victor Hugo’s black and white designs, which are amazing. He was a great designer and painter with ink and sometimes made terrifying designs of not only his stories but of Paris and people around him generally, which all suited perfectly the environment of Les Misérables. It’s a completely new way of telling the story, without the turntable but certainly as impressive and as emotional as the original version.”
Given Les Miz’s globe-girdling success, it’s not surprising that many of its songs are instantly recognizable even to those not familiar with the show — none more so than I Dreamed a Dream, which was given an extra boost of recognition first by Susan Boyle, then by Anne Hathaway’s Oscar-winning delivery in the 2012 film version.
It’s a completely new way of telling the story, without the turntable but certainly as impressive.
Boublil describes this latest touring version as having a more cinematic quality. Although it predates the release of the film version, he speculates that the show’s latest directors, James Powell and Laurence Connor, might have been influenced by it, “especially with quicker links between scenes.”
The enormous success of the film has, if anything, made the show even more venerable, making those initially sniffy reviews back in 1985 seem even more of a distant memory.
And its reputation certainly hasn’t been harmed by Lin-Manuel Miranda citing it as a major influence on Hamilton.
“I can only be proud that there’s some influence there, certainly,” Boublil says, with a touch of modesty. “It’s very rewarding.”