Flaws in Successful Broadway Shows — Page 3

Maybe the Light in the Piazza had some flaw, but it was NOT the score that was the problem...

---

>>Actually, Les Miserables could use a much tighter (and abridged) book although with the source material I believe they did a very good job in the adaptation. However, I truly dislike it when British musicals pretentiously try to be operas but they're not like the awkward recitative in Les Miserables. I believe the show might've worked better for me if it had spoken dialogue instead of recitative (it is arguably the most-loved musical so I'm probably the only person who thinks this).<<

I just saw the show the other day and thought the exact same thing. I really enjoy some "rock operas" but I just thought Les Mis would have been much stronger with a more dialouge orientated script.

Les Mis is a LONG book, so it would naturally be a long musical. If you cut it down, it just loses emotion and fullness.

It is not about cutting it down, just the way it was written to begin with, it could have used a more efficient and abridged way to establish situations and develop characters.
Just because a book is long it doesn't mean that a stage
adaptation should be expected to be eternal. (Then Proust's masterpiece novel should be expected to be three days long? or even LOTR, for that matter.)
For what I know, by the end of its Broadway run, Les Miz was shorter than it was when it opened, and sometimes it's almost as 45 minutes shorter for international productions...that says something.

---