Mickey Jo (0:00)

Oh, mon Dieu. Salut. By which I mean, oh my God. Hey, welcome back. My name is Mickey Jo and I'm obsessed with all things theatre. I am a professional theatre critic here on social media and today I'm going to be letting you know about a production. I travel to Paris to go and see a little known musical called Les Miserables. In fact, probably my second favourite musical of all time, right behind into the Woods. But I'll tell you more about why that is Momentarily you're probably thinking, Mickey, Joe, we have Les Mis at home. What you going to France for? And you know, aside from the opportunity to enjoy alternative theatre districts and non replica productions, this was a particularly special production of Les Miserables because it was performed in French, which not every musical produced in Paris necessarily is on the same trip. I saw hello Dolly performed in English, but also this is a brand new production both in terms of the staging. It's a non replica production with new direction by Ladislas Chola but also a new French translation from the show's writers. Much of the text apparently has been newly re translated. It's sung through, so it's sung entirely in French and they have titles at the side of the stage with both the French language transcript as well as an English translation. An English translation that is from my level of French and my ability in French, I would say a lot less accurate. It loses a little bit of the poetry. But then the same thing happens the other way because when I saw hello Dolly it was transcribed with the French translation and again it just loses a little bit of some of the intention in some of the sentences. I'll explain more about why that is. Three things are happening simultaneously. I am listening to the new French lyrics, I am reading the English translation and compare contrasting it with my understanding of the French that I'm hearing. But I'm also largely compare contrasting it with the original English lyrics. At that part in the score I'm thinking, oh, this seems like a different idea. Where were, where was this originally? What are we normally saying at this point? Have we moved away in terms of character, in terms of characterization? And there are some very interesting choices that set this production apart in certain ways from the original version that we all know and love. And I'll be telling you all about that today. I'm not going to waste much time telling you why. Les Mis is a brilliant show. It is understandably epic. It has run for an extensive amount of time in London and it's not because of its historic specificity. What resonates with London audiences about a failed student revolution in Paris. It's more about what it represents as well as, you know, the resonance that that music has come to have. I would argue that a lot of London audiences aren't necessarily engaging with the themes of the show so much as the themes in the score. And of course it has been kept buoyant all of these years by extraordinary performances. We'll be talking about those and the French cast of the show as well. But stay tuned for all of my thoughts on Les Miserables in French now, if you have been lucky enough to see this production, I would love to hear from you in the comments section, particularly if you are a native French speaker. I would love to hear interpretation of the show if you were able to compare it, perhaps with the English language version. I'd be so intrigued to hear what your thoughts are. And if you want to see more about this production and the Theatre Theatre du Chatelet where I saw the show, stay tuned for full vlog coverage of my like 36 hour trip to Paris to see two musicals. Make sure you're subscribed with the notifications turned on here on YouTube so you don't miss that video if you're listening to me on a podcast platform. Meanwhile, hello to you. Make sure you're following for many more reviews coming very soon. In the meantime, let us discuss Les Mis. I was about to do a bit and pretend I was tearing this up like a yellow ticket of leave. That would have been a terrible idea. I'm going to wave it like a flag instead. That's much better. Ordinarily I don't do these from scripts. When I get really passionate about something, I will make a lot of notes. I was making furious notes, typing so fast throughout the interval. I think I ran out of time and then had to do more at the end because there were so many things that I wanted to say and so many specific details. But I will give you like really, really brief context before we get into any of that. Les Miserables is a musical written by French composers Claude Michel Schoenberg and Alain Bubliel. The two of them collaborated on the book. Schoenberg wrote the score, Bublil and Jean Marc Neterre, I believe, wrote the lyrics, and Herbert Kretsmer did much of the translation of the lyrics. Now, this is not as widely discussed, but the musical actually premiered first in Paris and was subsequently produced more successfully a few years later by Sir Cameron Mackintosh, with whom it is now largely associated. It was produced originally at the Barbican Theatre in London with the Royal Shakespeare Company, subsequently seen at the Palace Theatre and then the Queen's Theatre, now renamed the Sondheim Theatre, where the show continues to run, albeit in a new production, no longer the original staging by Sir Trevor Nunn. The comparison between the original and the new production is a different discussion for another time. I know people want to see that video, I want to make that video, but I feel like I need to see it at least once more to really drink it in. Now, this production first caught my attention both because it was being performed in French, it was being performed in Paris, it was happening at a theatre, I believe, feet away from the bridge, where Javert performs his biggest number in the second act. I don't know why I'm trying to tiptoe around. Spoiler alerts. He jumps. He jumps off the bridge, everybody. Now, you know. And I was so intrigued to see how it would be received by that Parisian audience, because also, given the history of the show, it's not been hugely successful in Paris. Musical theatre is not totally embraced in Paris. I have been told offhand that Parisian audiences, French audiences don't love depictions of their own culture, necessarily. But also musical theatre, it just isn't part of the culture, I think, and this is a little bit facetious of me here, don't take this too personally, French people. I think it's to do with the dining culture, because inherently, if you're going to the theatre, you have to either begin your dinner very late because Les Mis an incredibly long show, you have to either begin your dinner incredibly late or interrupt a dinner. And the French like to eat, and they like to eat for a long time. And I have no beef with that whatsoever. Listen, France, I get you. But I do wonder if that is why going to the theatre, like, they have a lot of, like, late night cabaret, which would work after dinner. I just. I wonder. I wonder if that's part of the problem. In any case, was so intrigued to see Les Mis returning to Paris. New adaptation. Let's talk about the translation. So I mentioned briefly that the French lyric which we were hearing and the English translation being shown was not exactly like, for, like. And it's very small details, it's minor things. It's like in the English translation it would have Eponine saying, keep your money. Whereas in the French it was I don't want your money, which I think is different because it conveys more of the emotional sense of the thing. The French lyric also had I burn with love at one point, which was translated In English, simply as I love, which is not nearly as dramatic for Marius. There are moments, and I'd been aware of this previously, about many French language translations of things. It's something I love about this, where it feels wildly more poetic. You hear this in a lot of what Fantine sings, in a lot of what Eponine sings. You hear it in On My Own, quite specifically, both in the original translation and in the new one, because she's quite to the point in the British version. In the English language version, it's just very matter of factly on my own. Pretending he's beside me all alone I walk with him till morning. And the French lyric riffs on the idea of my story. It is one that began in the sorrows of my childhood. And I fantasize about him being with me in the story that I craft between the two of us. It's articulating the same point. She's sad for the same reasons, but it's a lot more floral. Eponine, I think, is probably the character most affected by the change in characterization of the lyric. And I think that probably sits with the cultural difference as well, because she's this. I mean, everyone is very British coded in Les Mis in London because they perform with cockney accents if they're off the street. No one is utilizing a French accent in the West End in Les Miserables. And Eponine sort of feels like Nancy in Oliver, but on harder times. And so she's very hard edged and tomboyish and resilient and the French Eponine feels like a very angsty, very melancholy teenage diarist. This continues with the lyrics of A Little Fall of Rain. Again, huge spoiler alert here. Eponine has just been shot trying to get back to Marius after delivering a letter for him that she didn't want to deliver because it's to the girl that he likes instead of her. She finds her way to him on the barricade, but she's shot in the process. And he cradles her dying body as she reassures him that she doesn't feel any pain and everything is going to be okay as long as he is with her. He is finally giving her the attention that she has always craved, even if not in the way that she wanted. And also, she's dying, so that's not great. But in English she sings, don't you fret, Monsieur Marius, I don't feel any pain. A little fall of rain can hardly hurt me now. And they sing and rain will make the flowers grow. It's this very melancholy, bittersweet thing where she's pretending everything's fine and she doesn't really address the situation. And there are so many lyrics in the French version where she's like, a little rain, a little blood, blood on the flowers. They'll be fine. Like, still insisting on the positivity of it all. But we hear a lot of the detail of her difficult situation. It's made a lot more clear to us that she's currently bleeding out from a bullet wound, and there's no point dancing around that. On the flowers in the rain, I think she also said, my tears will make the flowers grow, which is very different. Now, I've sort of got ahead of myself here. I want to talk generally about some of the challenges that you encounter in translating material like this, and one of them is just the nature of the languages. French is in many places a lot more syllabic. It takes more syllables to articulate a point, so there is less they are able to get across. But then in some examples, like I just told you, they get around that with this incredibly vibrant imagery that is not present in the English language production. Occasionally you have little challenges within this. Like I dreamed a dream is an example of this. On that climbing note where you would normally hear as they turn your dream to shame in French, it became the note passe. And it was passe. And it sort of split the final note in a way that was not ideal. But then you would. You would close off the vowel if you'd go PA sou, Because the strength and the openness of PA is what you want on that top note, rather than. Which is a lot more closed. Even with great vowel shaping, which I am not currently doing. That's also a thing. I think there are many more French vowels that are more like here and. And. And like it's delivered here. Whereas there are more opportunities to open the vowel and sing it more. Ah. In English. A lovely language. That being said, some of Fantine's vowels are a wildly easier sing in France because she has some horrible vowels. In the English language production, where it's all like dreams that cannot be. And it's horrible ease. Speaking of things that are slightly harder to sing. 246-01-24601 is easier to sing in English, I think, because you have a springboard consonant, you can go wa rather than. In French, it becomes deux catrice. They sing o rather than zero, which I wondered about that because I was like syllables. And then it's. So it's just. Which you can Hear in my voice is harder than wa allows you to open it up and bounce off of the W that you're making in one the wa and is. You just have to hit it. While we're talking about I dreamed a dream, the tigers that come at night are now wolves for whatever reason. There are moments where it's less metaphorical and more literal. She sings like I was 20 and she's like, I wanted to have a nice time and I wanted to drink and go to parties and what's so wrong with that? As opposed to the whole, like, I was young and unafraid and dreams they made, they used, they're wasted, all of that stuff. French Fantine is more to the point. She's like, I had a little wine, I got a little pregnant. Listen, it happens. There are some moments that used to rhyme that no longer rhyme. And there are some moments that newly rhyme that didn't rhyme before. There are occasionally new rhyming couplets that never used to be a thing, which is quite fun. And in any Non Replica production or in any revision of material, what you usually get is some sacrifices that don't quite hold up to the strength of the original, but also opportunities to find new things in some areas where it's like, oh, I actually prefer that to the original. I find that is almost always the case in Non Replica productions. And I thought the same way about the translated lyrics. For example, there is a lyric in A Heart Full of Love that is a better rhyme for Cosette than Regret, because it used to be no tears, no regret. My name is Marius Polmessi and mine's Cosette. And instead of regret, that lyric before now ends on vous et. And that rhymes with Cosette. And that just. I was like, oh, it hit my ear and I had to immediately think, what was that before that? That just sounded so much better. This is the kind of fascinating experience you have, by the way, of seeing a show in another language. I encourage you all to do it. It's really fascinating, especially a show, you know. Well, I wasn't convinced by Le Grand Jeux, the big day. Rather than one day more. I think one day more conveys more of this sense of like, what we're going towards, rather than L'Grandjour. It's like, we're already here, it's already happening. One day more is like, oh, it's tomorrow. Like a shirt is going down tomorrow. La grandejour is like, it's now, it's happening right now, but we're about to have an interval. So it's not really happening right now. What's happening right now is we're gonna go have a glass of wine and maybe. I was gonna say an ice cream tub. Not in Paris. That's an English thing. We're gonna take a little break. La Grande Jour is really in about 15, 20 minutes. They also don't say, do you hear the people sing? That is not directly translated. It is a different idea. And I think every time the lyric comes back, it's something else. It's not like an entirely new phrase replacing, do you hear the people saying, like, La grandeur replaces one day more? It is just like whatever they want to say on that particular lyric at that particular moment. Let's talk about Valjean and some of his early lyrics, because this is where I started to really notice the difference in Valjean's soliloquy, where he is reckoning with how he has been treated by the bishop and how this has altered his worldview. And by the way, they talk a lot about the soul. There is a lot of imagery in these lyrics to do with the soul. And there are more references to the soul in these new lyrics than in the one before. It wasn't absent before. It's like he told me that I have a soul. Can such things be? But they really hammer home that idea of, like, I have a soul. What does it mean to have a soul? Let's consider this and, you know, let's hold space for that. In this one, Valjean is very clear about being like, I was planning to wreak untold amounts of vengeance and brutality upon the face of the earth. Such was my rage at being released. Now I'm gonna go in this different direction because this elderly gentleman of the clergy has been quite nice to me and given me some lighting fixtures from his dinner table, which, you know, is what he was getting at before. But he says it explicitly here. Like, I had planned on vengeance and now I turn another way. Oh, the lyrics specifically, I've just remembered that Valjean sang was like, I will spare the world the wrath of Valjean. I was like, I love that. Oh, my gosh. In terms of all of the soul stuff, I couldn't tell if we were deliberately leaning into something a little less divine. The musical and the text's relationship with God has always been very interesting. And France has a slightly different relationship to religion than the United Kingdom. And so I'm curious for anyone else who saw it, if you felt like that was a conscious choice or not. A couple more Lyrical Thoughts. Gavroche's indictment of Javert is a lot more scathing. Whereas again, I think this is the same difference we see in Eponine. France to England. Gavroche is very styled after the Artful Dodger. Which apparently it was seeing the Artful Dodger on stage in Oliver that inspired, I think it was Schoenberg to realize that Les Mis could exist as a stage show. He saw the Artful Dodger and he was like, oh, I see Gavroche in that. I see Les Mis as a musical. And hence Les Mis. Out of the world of British musical theatre came the inspiration for Les Mis. Anyway, that feels like who West End Gavroche, English language Gavroche is styled after. But in Paris, he sings things like Javert like, he may be a policeman but he has no heart in his chest. Worlds apart from like, that inspector thinks he's something, but it's me who runs this town and my theater never closes and the curtains never down. Like it's that same bit of music where French Gavroche is like, he has no heart in his chest and he is soulless and evil and cruel. And I'm like, wow, Gavroche. Matt Gavroche is ready for war. Immediately after that, we hear one example of a lyric that's a little more on the nose. British Eponine would sing Cosette. Now I remember Cosette. How could it be? We were children together. Look what's become of me. Something to that effect. Parisian Eponine sings more literally. Look at her now. She's this bourgeoisie lady and I am a peasant. Things are not going well. One last thing I will add. The lyrics for Turning hit differently, and I think they always do if you don't have a revolve. This is a song that I always question whether Turning works without a revolve because the staging of it justifies the lyric. Now, I was very intrigued by this. And this will tie in with what I'm about to say about the staging of the production. This Turning felt a little different because usually the lyrics of Turning are talking about the futility of the students sacrifice. And they are cleaning up the street after them and they're saying, did you see them lying where they died? Same old story. This like year after year, death and pointlessness. And nothing changes, nothing ever will. And I have never before in an English language production of Les Mis felt anything other than this, like, sadness and this sorrow and this disappointment at the pointlessness of this loss. In this production, it felt like this actually was a Turning point, pardon the pun. The lyrics weren't all that different, but it felt like they were sort of quietly, without realizing it, being galvanized into change. Like this sacrifice had represented something and this wouldn't be forgotten. Like they were going to hold on to this. And they were sort of, each of them a little changed by the experience of having born witness to it. And so the implication that this non revolution had inspired something meaningful beyond, you know, the reason for doing it in the first place. And just like the belief and the dream and all of that stuff that Les Mis is getting at that I thought was newly powerful. Anyway, let's move on and talk about the direction. So, new production by Ladislat Shola. The set design was a little interesting. They had this gauze curtain that they moved in and out occasionally with a darker curtain behind it. There were a little more scenes than I would have liked played with just a black curtain behind. Because it's this huge theatre. If you've never seen the inside of this auditorium Theatre du Chatelet, it is gorgeous. It is multi tier. It's this incredible space and the stage was vast and that sort of begets a grand production. It's also Les Mis. The scale of this score and of these emotions are both epic. You can't do this subtly. There was a lot of clever innovation and versatility in the way they utilised a couple of set pieces. I just wanted a little more. But there were moments I still really enjoyed what they did with it. It was sort of, sort of deliberately threadbare on occasion to demonstrate the poverty of it all. But I felt like we still needed a little more scale in places. I didn't love the gauze curtain moving mid song, but I did love the way that it was occasionally used to create scenery. There was a lot of great stuff done with projection. It was very familiar of a lot of the watercolour esque projection designs. The revamped West End production. The wedding, by the way, is one example of a scene that was played against a black backdrop. Like they had chandeliers that came, they had a table, but initially we had this wedding moment against black backstrap and then they brought that up to reveal a little bit of scenery. Not as much as I would have liked. Like it's meant to be a lavish wedding, everyone looks very nice, but they haven't, you know, they scrimped on the venue is the implication. For the most part, the one set piece that was reutilised the most often looked like the non business end of A hammer, or the other side of the business end of a hammer, like this sort of a curved thing that forked into two different tines, sort of curving along a right angle. And that became the docks that the convicts were toiling in at the beginning. It became various different structures as it was rotated around different ways that was utilized every which way. The house on Ruplame, meanwhile, had multiple walls, had a gate, allowed Marius to sort of break through in a more convincing way than I've ever seen him do before. That was a really well built location, and I just wish the same had extended to other ones. Thenardier actually goes through a trapdoor into the sewers at the end of that sequence. I was so ready to be angry at this barricade because they had the gauze down and they had the black cloth down. They brought on truly a couple pieces of furniture, and they sort of plopped those in the middle of the stage. And I was like, that better not be the barricade. Do not tell me that is the barricade. And then they lifted the gorse and then they had an actual barricade, and that was fine. Another detail I liked, this is not specifically set design, but when we heard the loud hailer. You know him, you love him, you know his work. He is singing you at the barricade. Listen to this. You have no chance, no chance at all. Why throw your lives away? But in French, we actually saw him. You could see even more than the silhouette of him. You could see him lit fascinatingly in the back behind the barricade. And that gave him a little extra humanity. That's one of the few details I really love from the film adaptation. And Hadley Fraser does a great job in the film adaptation. And I love the loud hailer. So I was happy to see him represented on stage. That gave it more humanity and more reality, which is what this production, in all of its elements, does very well. This doesn't feel like grand, glorious, clean Les Mis that has the costume department, you know, taking care of all of these outfits. This felt more down to earth, more gritty. It felt like the dirt under the West End production's fingernails. I mean that in a wonderful, appreciative, complimentary way, because I think Les Mis probably should feel like that. And I think it would be impossible to stage it in Paris where, you know, this was a way of life, where this is not within living memory. But it would be disingenuous for it to feel anything other than authentic, which is what this one feels a lot more. I Think to that end, they fly French flags alongside the red revolutionary flag at the end of Act 1. This is one of the most powerful moments in the thing because as we are hearing La Grande Jeur, the French version of One Day More, the back cloth goes up to reveal the orchestra as they are playing. People love that. It's, you know, it's technically piercing our understanding of the story at that moment. But we all know that we're sat in a theatre anyway, so I don't mind it particularly. I thought it was a great touch, actually. You can celebrate the musicians who are also delivering you this incredible score, this rapturous music. And at that moment, members of the company left the stage and came down into the aisles of the stalls, waving flags, singing. And it was to be surrounded by that, for that to be among us, sort of democratizing it, I thought was staggering. I thought that was a fantastic choice. Inspired. Even that orchestra reveal was met with applause. It's not the only time that they toy with the orchestra. We see them during the Thenardier Waltz and during the wedding sequence. And that really works because there's a lot of acknowledgements within the script to Maestro, please continue. And Thenardier says this at one point after he's been embarrassed by Marius. Marius doesn't punch him in this version, but just sort of flees. And Thenardier goes to say, maestro. And the conductor, who is a woman, turns around and says, maestra. She has a microphone in order to deliver this line. I think that got applause as well. That was a nice little touch. I should also add that that moment, that very impactful moment at the end of the first act when the performers flood into the aisles during La Grande Jeur is not the first time we have had them in the aisles. They enter through the aisles for look down. There are priests of. Look down when we have jumped forwards in time and they are the beggars of Paris. This is an inspired choice because you have, you know, the most expensive seats in this grand, beautiful theatre, and everyone is there for an evening of grand, lovely, sweeping theatre. And you have these characters dressed as beggars and peasants around them, addressing the audience, singing, look down and see the beggars at your feet. But in French. I thought that was great. I thought that was wonderful. A little before that, when Jean Valjean is singing who Am I? We see the man who is presumed to be him, the man whose fate he would be sealing if he doesn't reveal his own identity. A lot earlier in the song than I think I've ever noticed in a previous production, making the implications of the thing all too clear in terms of other moments that I thought I was about to be disappointed by and then tore my entire heart out. Gavroche again, huge spoiler alert here. But Gavroche volunteers to climb through the barricade and go and try and retrieve ammunition that has been dropped on the floor. Because he's small, because he's fast. Marius was about to do it and then Valjean is like, no, don't let Marius do it. I'm secretly here to try and make sure he survives so that he can marry my daughter because she's sad and lonely all the time. I'll do it instead. And then Gavroche is like, stop whining. I'm just gonna go do it. And Gavroche does not survive this act of bravery. In the original West End production, which of course utilized famously the revolve, the entire barricade turned around and you could see Gavroche climbing around, dodging bullets that you would hear as he's singing a cappella, a reprise of his light hearted song Little People. And you would hear incredibly loud gunshots trying to shoot him, the last of which would prove fatal in this production. We see him go through onto the other side of the barricade and then we can't see him. And I'm like, this isn't going to work if we can't see him. We hear him, we hear a gunshot. And then he comes back through very early, but he's clutching himself, not unlike Eponine post gunshot. And he sings the rest of the thing weekly and sort of apologetically, like he's apologizing for not having done it properly for dying. Heartbreaking. And then he's singing it, he's coming forwards, he collapses down, dies. It's. He's then there among them and sort of at their feet is the implication of this thing that they have done. Absolutely devastating. Really heartbreaking. Going back to earlier moments in the show when Lovely Ladies has happened and Fantine is, you know, doing what she's got to do to pay for her illegitimate child. This is a lot more overt. We see a little bit of dropped trow as a gentleman is having his, his way with her. It's, you know, it's visceral and difficult. The moment when the people of the barricade slowly realize that Eponine, who by all accounts has not made a big deal about being shot, is dead. And this wave of realization ripples across the stage and then they like stop each other overreacting to it too much. That's really well done. The lighting during many of the barricade scenes, comparatively, I felt, just looked surprisingly bright. But the lighting during empty chairs and empty tables, my goodness. We had these projected shadows on the wall of a set piece behind Marius as he is singing. And then he is lit in such a way that his own shadow is among them. And we see this contrast between him standing there alone and this shadowy image of him among all of his friends. And rather than having them at the back of the stage behind gores or lit in a funny way, as has been done before, I thought that was powerfully effective. Something very interesting happened when Javert was released by Valjean. And I may be mistaking this, but I'm sure in previous productions it is meant to be implied that he shoots the gun in order to make it sound like he has shot him after all, when he tells Javert to run away. But then it follows that once they find out there's no body, they would realize something was up. So in this production, he lets him start running and then he acknowledges having missed him. And they look frustrated with Valjean for having messed up the punishment by death that they had intended when it comes to Javert's actual death. Spoiler alert. Jumps off a bridge. We see him atop this set piece I was telling you about, the one that looks like the other side of the business end of a hammer. And we see him falling forward. I mean, first of all, just to have him appear up there at the moment of making this decision to leap from the bridge. An incredibly powerful visual, a really strong visual. And then he leans forwards and in slow motion, we see him fall forwards. And then it's a blackout. So we don't see the extent of his fall. And I, you know, I liked it. I feel there are two choices that you can do with this moment. Either we need to see him slow motion, fall all the way down, giving it arms and legs, giving it that with projections against him, or the fall is fast. And then you do a blackout. I don't know that I love a slow motion fall into a blackout. It just labours the point. I feel a little. Here's where I was really shook. Valjean also dies at the end. Spoiler alert. Very few people survive Les Miserables and he's reunited with the priest. We've seen this before. We've seen this in the film adaptation. He didn't have the candlesticks. I did a youth production of Les Mis that was very similar to the original staging. And it was made. I was reminded, like, it's very important. I was playing Jean Valjean. You have to carry on the candlesticks. He has those candlesticks the whole way through. They remind him of who he was. And it always tickled me that he would have the candlesticks both because a stage manager used to have to run on and blow them out in the West End production after the whole thing ends. And that's, that's like the final moment of Les Miserables. It's like very touching. End and then blow out the candlesticks. But also because when the priest gives him the candlesticks, it's not to keep. It's not to like be Indiana Jones. And like, physically, when he says, you must use this precious silver to become an honest man, he doesn't mean like, hold on to them and Indiana Jones your way through the jungle using the candlesticks to like knock people out of your way. He means sell them. He means sell them and buy a better life for yourself. So him not having them in the French production, they've probably actually thought about it because he's reunited with the bishop in this version. He sees the bishop at the moment of his death. And I just think if the bishop was to see him there and look over and see the candlesticks, he's like, why do you still have the candlesticks? I told you to use the candidate. That's not what I meant. Anyway, enough about the candlesticks. What threw me completely. He's not only reunited with the bishop, Javert is there. He's reunited with Javert. I have never seen this reunion between Valjean and Javert pre curtain call. This moment of them. Like, if we believe in heaven, if that's where the soul is going according to Les Miserables, then Valjean and Javert both there. The world apparently cannot hold the two of them together, but the afterlife can. Anyway, I have spoken enough about the portrayals of these characters in the production. Let me tell you about their performances. So it goes without saying, everyone sounded fantastic. The voices were remarkable. And I really loved the opportunity to hear a little bit more of vocal individuality. Dare I say the West End production has, you know, it's done very well to maintain it's coming up to its 40th anniversary. Right. And to ensure something keeps running, it becomes a well oiled machine. And the way that they sing in Les Mis in the West End, it's glorious. It sounds great. You do get variety of voices when new people come in and some people do it A slightly different way, but it does feel very regimented. They have a certain type of a vibrato. It has a heck of a pace to it, and it was just nice to hear something that felt a little freer. I'm going to apologize in advance for my terrible pronunciations of all of these French names. The irony being I have a French surname. Jean Valjean was portrayed by Benoit Rameau. Sung fantastically, sung triumphantly, and played with a real determination and a grit and a force, especially in those earlier scenes. One of the more, like I said, brutal and furious and determinedly vengeful Valjeans that I think I've ever seen. You often get, you know, a lot of performers who can sing really beautifully and are cosplaying a lot of the angrier emotions that he has at the beginning, just trying to broadcast that rage through a lovely voice. But you really felt the redemption of this man, and you felt that he. I felt more so here, I think, than ever before, that he really came from this impoverished world, that he was really of those people and at all points was pretending throughout the rest of his life when he was hiding among wealth. Javert was played by an actor named Sebastien Duchange. Another remarkable performance. What I really loved about the casting here, they were both bald, neither of them were wigged, and so they looked. It was like this blood brothers thing of. They looked very much like yin and yang. They looked sort of very similar to each other, but with very, very cross purposes throughout. The other component of that is, I don't know that I bought into the aging up throughout the narrative. This takes place over decades, from the beginning. If you didn't know, it's harder to age up bald men, because I think the wig does an awful lot of work. I want to talk about Stanley Cassar, who played Enjolras. I thought he really sold this wonderful backwards death that he gave us on the barricade. No version of this staging with this music behind it, with the instrumental reprise of Bring Him Home, as they're all slowly dying in the last battle. And then they're lying there when Javert comes in through the barricade. No version of that will ever be as powerful as Trevannon's version of it. It's magical what he achieved with the barricade turning to reveal it all. When you just see Enjolras collapse over the top and then you turn around and he's there with the flag. I will say, a lot easier to get into position when you're behind a barricade. In the West End. So the one in Paris did very well to give us that before our eyes. But I'm always disinclined to think there will ever be a staging that will live up to that version. I also thought he did a wonderful job as Enjoir Ras sold the determination of that necessarily humorless as well. Grantaire was very interesting with the way that he was characterized in this production. I don't know, sadly, which specific performer played Grantaire, because it's not listed here in the program. But he was less the rugged drunk that we know him to be in the English language production. And he was a little more of a dandy, a little more playful. And I think that set us up for more heartbreak when he has that moment of sorrow in Drink With Me. David Alexei and Christine Barnard were playing Thenardier and Madame Thenardier. And I think this is one of the elements that the London production probably realizes a little better, perhaps a little inauthentically with their cockney accents, but just the breadth of their comedy. There is a fascinating duality to Thenardier because we see a real darkness from him in many of his scenes, like outside of Master of the House, which is played almost entirely for laughs, as well as his final moment at the wedding. But certainly when we're down in the sewers, it is not a comedy song that he sings when he's singing Dog eat dog. This version felt as though it leant more heavily into that. I think comedy is also the hardest thing to convey across a language barrier. So that's always the thing that is going to be the least likely to come across. But it didn't seem, based on the audience response to that moment. It didn't seem to be that kind of a broad comedic performance. A little more unhinged, for sure. Especially Madame Thenardier, who's got a knife at the wedding. She was making some choices quickly going back to the translation. While I'm thinking of Thenardier, I didn't love that the slurs that have been removed from the English lyrics are backing and worse in the French. There is also. There is. The French have a different relationship to certain words of profanity than we do. They use some of them more casually. There is a word that we almost never use in the United Kingdom that is tossed out as Thenardier is trying to convince Marius he belongs at his wedding. That's a little bit of a surprise. But then the line that comes afterwards that used to be, this one's a queer, that one's A Jew that is now excised from the London lyrics, if you didn't know. Which also gave inspiration to Rob Madge's show My sons are queer. But what can you do if you didn't know that's where that came from? It's back in. In Paris. And if anything it's worse, much worse. Speaking of Marius, he was played by Jacques Price and I thought he was wonderful. So believably in love and consumed by it, very romantically driven. He also navigated what I always think is a very challenging part of the score where Valjean first reveals to him all of his circumstances and he sings. There lived a man whose name was Jean Valjean. Marius response to this is to say for the sake of Cosette it must be so, but it's a little curt. And Marius at that point hasn't yet realized that it was Valjean who saved his life by going to the barricade. By dragging his unconscious body through the sewer from the barricade, saving his life. He only finds out about that from Thenardier at the wedding. And that's when his opinion changes a little about Valjean. But it's very hard to play the moment that comes before. And he found a real measured anger in that that I think sat very well opposite him. Juliette Artigalla played Cosette, a performer I believe I've seen before on stage. Actually sounded wonderful. Sounded a little. A little more robust, a little more sort of warmth to the tone than you hear in a lot of Christine Daae esque Cosettes. Still like the legit range, still a beautiful tone, still clearly very classically sung. But I liked it just a little. A little bit of a different colour to the voice as well. And she really sold Valjean's death at the end with how emotionally involved she was in that moment. In that same scene. It was lovely to see a little flash of acknowledgement from Claire Perrault, which is also incidentally the name of my old French teacher. Different one, different one who was playing Fantine. As she draped herself over the bed and reached towards her now adults daughter. Her dying wish was for her daughter to be taken care of and for her to get to see her again. And so it's nice to really have her acknowledge that in that moment. I also thought she gave a fantastic performance, one of the best in the show. Her voice utterly remarkable. The power and the pain that she commanded singing I Dreamed a Dream, probably the most iconic song from the score. This score, which features a lot of iconic songs, the Prologue notwithstanding, it's really Fantine who first sells us on the soul of the show. And this heartbreak and this devastation and the difficulty that was this life. And hers was such a fascinating voice to me, piercing through so brilliantly at the top of her range, but with this breath to it, with this despair to it, it was so affecting and yet the power that came with that as well. Finally, Ossian de Monty played Eponine in what I think was probably my favourite performance from the entire show. A wonderful Eponine standing very apart, like I mentioned, from the way that I've seen Eponine characterised before, but just sensationally sung. And I think, except for the curtain call, probably the loudest ovation that was heard throughout the night, it really was a show stopping performance. And to do that with just a big vocal delivery of an outpouring of despair in a show that is filled with big vocal deliveries of outpouring of despair, for this one to stand apart because it was so well sung, because it was so powerfully and passionately performed, that was really something. She was remarkable. And I should mention the response to the entire thing as well, because like I said, I was curious to see how this was received. Paris, historically, France historically has not celebrated Les Miserables, the stage musical, nearly as much as other countries around the world. Specifically, specifically the United Kingdom, specifically the us. But it was an extraordinary ovation that the show received. It was multiple ovations. In fact, they kept raising that curtain back up and the cast kept returning to the stage, taking bow after bow. And this is apparently a thing. The French have this thing where if they really love something, they will all start to clap in sync. So it becomes like. But with thousands of people around the auditorium doing it, I don't think I'm ever going to forget the experience of that. And I've never experienced that before, even in a French audience. So clearly something very special. I am so grateful for the opportunity to get to go and see this, one of my favourite musicals of all time, realized in a completely new way. A completely new way. I hope that there is considerable life for this new production, for this new translation. I encourage anyone who is a fan of this material to go and see it. Yes, I understand a little bit of French, but I don't think that needs to be a barrier to you. If you don't, not only is it titled at the side and translated, but also you understand, you know what it means, and it is so meaningfully performed that you can understand what they are singing. Regardless, those have been my thoughts about Les Miserables at Theatre du Chatelette in Paris. I hope that you have enjoyed this review. If you did, make sure to subscribe or follow me wherever you are seeing or hearing this so you don't miss any of my upcoming reviews, including a review of hello Dolly, also in Paris, as well as right here on YouTube, my upcoming vlog about the trip. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey jaw for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Joe Theater. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.