Les Miserables

Last night I am very glad to say that I went to see Les Miserables at the Queen's Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue.  Before this I hadn't seen any stage or film production of it, but I had read the book.  As with every adaptation of a book there are bound to be differences; characters changed, scenes missing and the like.  I mean how do you turn a book that's almost a thousand pages long into a show that's short enough to expect people to sit through?

Now obviously, as with all reviews, this is hugely subjective.  But I thought they did a terrific job.  The amount they had to cut out didn't detract from the story, it just gave more information on the background of a few people, most notably the link between Marius and Thernardier.  This is just added depth to the brilliant work of Victor Hugo, but is far from essential.

Again, with two different versions you will always get different interpretations of characters.  This is exaggerated in my view for Eponine.  When I read the book I saw her as a little bit hopeless, hardly saying anything, but the musical had her as a much stronger person.  Its also hard to be so quiet in a musical!  I like her a lot more in this version, and she had one of my favourite songs in On My Own.  Marius I found to be a smaller character in the stage show, although I did still really like him.  I just would've liked to see more of him at the barricade as that was my favourite scene of his in the book.

I'm also ashamed to say that I found Gavroche to be just a bit too annoying in the show.  I know he's an arrogant little kid so I should be annoyed by him, but it was worse than I thought.  On the contrary I much preferred Jaevert in the show.  Which is impressive as I really liked him in the book too.  Probably my favourite character in the show version.

The biggest change of all is the in Monsieur Thernardier.  He and his wife provide light relief in the show, which is kinda needed, but in the book he is much more evil and threatening to the happiness of Jean Valjean and Cosette.  Again this is just added depth to the story, but I thought it was useful in adding to the menacing air of it.  But that is something that the rest of the show does enough, and it needs some comic moments, which he delivers with aplomb.

Finally, I can't finish without discussing the staging.  The rotating section made it really easy to convey the thoughts of two sides of a divider, be it the garden fence or the barricade.  And the staging for the barricade was just fantastic, I remember seeing it come on stage for the first time and saying that it was just cool.

Brilliant show.  Now can't wait to finally let myself see the film.