Les Misérables

During my lovely break from employment, I’ve been trying to tick off a few items from our “things to do in London” list. When Mom and Dad were here back on 2007, Mom sneakily added “See Les Misérables” to the list when I wasn’t looking. It was only after buying the tickets that I actually reflected on what I had just done and thought, “wait a minute… that’s not my handwriting!”

Too late! We had booked two tickets for the matinée performance yesterday, and upon realising there was no real way to change my fate, Kristy suggested that I may enjoy the show a bit more if read over the plot beforehand. Boy am I glad I did! It also helped that Kristy told me that “Jean Valjean”‘s name is not at all pronounced as it is spelt – i.e. “GEE-n val-GEE-n” – but more like “JON val-JON”. I could have been mighty confused!

Anyway, it turned out to be much less painful than I had thought it would be. I’d even go so far as to say that I quite liked it! Well, at least I did at the start – they lost me a bit with the whole part about the French Revolution. Until then, the story had felt really personal – like you could actually relate to the characters – where-as the whole “rallying the troops” thing just didn’t do it for me.

I certainly don’t think I’m a convert into the world of musicals now, but I did enjoy this one a lot more than any other that I’ve seen (save perhaps for The Lion King). Prior to this, I think I’ve mostly only seen musical comedies, and I really don’t like them. A drama on the other hand I can totally get into – I like the way that the songs tell you a story, rather than just being a collection of lame jokes set to a zany soundtrack. And credit where credit’s due – some of those actors have amazing voices, and fantastic tonal range – I can definitely respect that!

So what would the gerrod.com rating be? I’d probably give it a 7.5/10 – nothing I’d rush to see again, but I think I can understand why Mom insisted we go in the first place.