What an amazing production by Arizona high school students

It’s reported every day: Teenage gunmen kill innocent bystanders in driveby shootings.

Unfortunately, the American media seems to have a blood lust for such things. But there is something else going on that is worth mentioning.

Last evening, Madame et moi were invited to attend an outdoor presentation of Les Miserables, the Broadway musical based on the book by Victor Hugo.

We had seen a rendition of the play when it made its world tour 30 years ago, but this was something nouveau.

The production took place in Cave Creek, a suburb of Phoenix, and its presentation was part of the Cave Creek Winter Theater Program. For those of you who have witnessed the Broadway production, you are familiar with the magnificent settings, staging, props, professional acting and singing done by Metropolitan Opera stars, thrilling music and well-choreographed scenes.

Well folks, that took place again, but its presenters, its stars, were junior and senior high school students from the Phoenix area. At the end of the threehour play, the audience believed that they had witnessed a thing of beauty done by a diverse cast of young people who, for a few hours were not American kids, they were French, and they were professionals.

The shots fired at the barricades came from harmless props, and the entire production — the placing of props, the manipulation of sound, the staging of a thrilling production was done by American youth still in secondary school.

Vive such students and their teachers and directors!

Allen R. Remaley, Scottsdale