Reviews 2013
Reviews 2013
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by Claude-Michel Schönberg & Alain Boublil, directed by Laurence Connor & James Powell
Mirvish Productions, Princess of Wales Theatre, Toronto
October 9, 2013-February 2, 2014
Students: “Drink With Me To Days Gone By”
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Les Misérables, producer Cameron Mackintosh decided to give the show, currently the longest running musical in London’s West End, a complete face-lift. The new production not only has new directors and new set and costumes, but new orchestrations and even added scenes. While these alterations have made the show musically and dramatically more effective, scenically it has become much more old-fashioned.
The original English-language production of 1984 by John Caird and Trevor Nunn was famous for its use of a stage-wide revolve, especially at the end of Act 1 and during most of Act 2 when it featured the barricades built by the students during the Paris Uprising of 1832. This staging became iconic of the musical because the revolve reflected so many aspects of the story. Its turning reflected the course of the twenty years the story covers, the major reversals of fortune of the main figure Jean Valjean and the opposition of the two views of justice in Victor Hugo’s novel – justice as the enactment of the letter of the law as embodied in Inspector Javert and justice as mercy as embodied first in the Bishop of Digne and then in Jean Valjean who takes the Bishop as the model of moral behaviour.
The new production launched as the “25th Anniversary Tour” in 2009 in Wales and has since toured Great Britain, Spain, South Korea, Japan and the US. The present Toronto production is a recreation of the 2009 production. It completely does away with the turntable. Instead a multitude of set elements slide in from the side or are pushed in from the back as in any conventional musical staging. Rather than the ground-breaking simplicity and symbolism of the original production, the new production suffers from clashes between intention and execution.
Mackintosh has said that he wanted a more “realistic” staging of the piece and that the sets would take their inspiration from Victor Hugo’s own paintings. The major irony there is that Hugo’s paintings, like the one that serves as the act drop, are done in a mode very like Turner’s and therefore are not realistic at all but impressionist and often abstract. The result is an odd clash of styles where we see impressionist paintings by Victor Hugo projected on the back drop while the set elements themselves by Matt Kinley are strictly realistic. All that really connects the two are Kinley’s adoption of the same dark palette of greys and umbers that Hugo used.
Not only are these set elements realistic they are in no way distinctive. Mackintosh could easily have plundered the cast-off sets of various old-fashioned productions of operas like Puccini’s La Bohème, Giordano’s Andrea Chénier or Massenet’s Manon and obtained the same “realism”. All that makes the set elements modern is that they are mostly automated rather than in pushed by stagehands.
The most annoying aspect of the production design are the attempts at animating the projections. The rebels march in place on stage while the video designer zooms out on a projection of Hugo’s Barricade Street to make look as if they are moving down it. This simply looks like a bad back projection rather than the effect achieved by people actually marching on a revolve. The worst use of such animation is when Javert commits suicide by jumping into the Seine. The animation follows Javert’s descent then shifts perspective to the approaching water and the final splash. This process takes the focus off Javert’s agony expressed in his “Soliloquy” and turns it into a theme-park spectacle.
The plus side of the new production is the orchestrations by Christophe Jahnke for a 17-member band. They have more richness and variety than the old orchestrations by John Cameron. However, Jahnke can go overboard and when striving for grand effects makes Schönberg’s music sound like a bombastic John Williams’ film score. As well, in a misplaced effort to capture the historical period, Jahnke often has the keyboards set to harpsichord mode and uses a recorder. This would be fine if Les Miz were set in the 18th century, but by the time period of the action, 1815-32, the fortepiano had replaced the harpsichord and the clarinet and transverse flute the recorder.
The best aspect of the new production is a greater clarity in storytelling and greater faithfulness to the novel. The action now begins with Jean Valjean on a prison galley as in the novel instead of in a chain-gang as in the earlier production. There are still points that could be improved. When Valjean, as the mayor M. Madeleine, lifts a fallen cart of a man trapped beneath it, Javert notes that he has seen such a feat of strength only once before accomplished by the prisoner Jean Valjean. Since we now have a scene on the galley, why not show us that image so that we understand the source of Javert’s suspicion?
The one Briton in the cast, Earl Carpenter, sang Javert at the premiere of the 25th Anniversary Production. Neither in his performance of Javert’s key solo “Stars” nor in his “Soliloquy” before his death, does Carpenter draw us into Javert’s moral dilemma or make his character clear. Carpenter’s task is not made easy since the directors choose to distract us with scenery effects during both numbers.
The singer who fills his role to perfection is Mark Uhre as Enjolras. He has a classically trained voice that is noticeably richer that that of any of the others, including Karimloo. His gestural language and clarity of phrasing immediately capture the idealism not just of his character but of all those behind the barricades. It is a wonderful moment when he begins “Do You Hear the People Sing” singing alone since the heroic enthusiasm with which he imbues the song stays with it until the final reprise.
One problem with the new dark, “realistic” style of presenting the musical is that the satiric comedy of the Thénardiers fits in even less well than it did in the original production. “Master of the House”, one of the first songs in the show that does not move the action forward seems to go on for too long and is mercilessly overdirected. If the directors think we need a break from the intensity of the show, and we don’t, a dance interlude at this point rather than a compendium of slapstick gags would be more suitable. The fitful reappearance of the Thénardiers in the Paris scenes, though in the novel, contributes nothing except rather dubious “comic relief” and could easily be excised.
In Hugo, the Thénardiers are not comic at all. Mme Thénardier dies in prison and M. Thénardier becomes a slave-trader in America. Of the two, Lisa Horner as Madame, comes off best, able, as when she played the wicked Witch of the West, to give her comedy an edge of villainy. Cliff Saunders, in contrast, relentlessly hams it up. When he shows Monsieur searching corpses in the sewers of Paris for valuables, you’d think he was playing Golem from The Lord of the Rings.
Of the young lovers Cosette and Marius, Perry Sherman has the stronger voice and make more of his part, while Samantha Hill has a pretty but smallish voice and has nothing much to do but look concerned. Sherman gives a fine rendition of “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables”, made even more effective by the absolute simplicity of the staging. If only the directors had allowed the songs to speak for themselves more often the show would have much more involving. Spectacle pushes us away from an individual. On a stage where the only movement is the singer’s and the only special effect is the delivery of his song, we are drawn in more to his emotion.
Though the new 25th Anniversary Production is not the revelation many claim it is, at least it does not diminish the impact of Schönberg and Boublil’s musical, a masterpiece that makes so many musicals written since 1984 look like so many pieces of lint compared to its great mantle. Completely through-sung, the musical itself is really a pop opera that had dared to take on Hugo’s massive 1862 novel and bring it successfully to the stage. So many writers of musicals have set their sights so low, that it is invigorating to experience again a musical that aims so high and hits the mark.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: (top) Chorus of Les Misérables, Mark Uhre centre. ©2013 Matthew Murphy; (upper middle) Ma Destinée, pen, wash and gouache, by Victor Hugo, 1857 (http://bittleston.com/artists/victor_hugo/). (lower middle) Ramin Karimloo as Jean Valjean; Geneviève Leclerc as Fantin. ©2013 Matthew Murphy.
2013-10-14
Les Misérables