Les Misérables: There will never be anything better.... — Page 5

This is not supposed to be a patriotism cry, it is true.

The American theatre and Broadway and the American musical plus jazz are the only thing thawt this country has given to the arts. And it is gone. Because we inserted this Britsh pop opera that have less of a book than a revue and put them on stage and then people like you say they are the best thing ever.

Wake up! Go buy Hello, Dolly! or My Fair Lady or Fiorello! or A Little Night Music or Cabaret or Camelot or or THe Pajama Game or Bels are Ringing or Funny Girl and listen to them for hours and hours and hours and hours and read about them for years and years and years. Go read The Glass Menagerie and Come Back, Little Sheba and Death of a Salesman or Bus Stop. Then maybe you will begin to understand what Broadway is. Then you might understand the glory the magic that is supposed to be on the stage. Then maybe you can catch a small part of what once effected the world and was the most glorious artistic world that existed from 41st to 54th Streets.

But the minute that you begin saying that Les Mis and Cats and Miss Saigon are the best musicals ever then that institution is dead. It strangles the life and the charm and the music and the words out of it until we will really have nothing left.

It is shocking that you can claim to love Broadway so much and be so ignorant as to what it really is. To what it really was. And one day may some of you realize what the theatres on Broadway today are missing and why Les Mis and Miss Saigon do not even come CLOSE to the beauty of My Fair Lady and Cabaret. These pop operas ruined what I grew up on. What I fell in love with. And the minute that people begin to tell me that they are all we have left I have to fight because what there was and what there still could be is being shrouded by these dispicable industralized Cameron Mackintosh "masterpieces."

And may the day come that musicals gain that charm and that essence back. If you went into Les Mis while it was running and pulled the plugs on the microphones you would be unpleasently surprised.

But Julie Andrews and Carol Channing and Enzio Pinza and Lauren Bacall never needed the aid. And the orchestras were twice as big!

So continue and go on. Tell the world that Les Mis is the best thing that has hit the earth since sliced bread, but know that you are missing something that is the most wonderful art form in the entire world and would still be had this damaging and horrible show never been written.

Because the orchestra in those musicals were aided with lots of synthesizers and some of the people in the show have neither the charm or the power or the factor that can seduce a whole audience with nothing but their natural instrument and nothing else.

No, instead you go to that theatre to be blasted out of your seat. Ethel Merman was just as powerful singing, "Rose's Turn" and no one had to crank her microphone up to maximum so that it is so loud and the orchestra is playing really hard to say, "THIS IS DRAM-A-TIC! THIS IS DRAM-A-TIC! THIS IS LOUD AND POWER-FUL AND DRAM-A-TIC!" No, Miss Merman could sing "Rose's Turn" could sing over a real thirty-piece orchestra and have the same dramatic and powerful effect on an audience.

And South Pacific took place during a war, too, but Ezio Pinza and Mary Martin and Richard Rodgers didn't need to take a bat and hit the audience over the head with it saying, "THIS IS WAR!! WAR IS BAD!! PEOPLE DIE AND WAR IS DRAMATIC AND EVERYTHING IS LOUD AND HIGH AND YELLING AND THAT SHOWS THAT WAR IS BAD! BAD! BAD!" Instead Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Hammerstein and their performers were able to display the horrors and the prejudices and the hate that war creates by "Some Enchanted Evening" and "You Have to Be Carefully Taught" and "Bal'i Hai" and "Softer Than Springtime."

Producers today treat the audience like dung. They dumb them down and underestimate their abilities. People pay exorbitant amounts of money, myself included, to see stuff that is not challenging or funny or charming or dramatic. The emotions and the dramatic quality of Les Mis is completely false and I liked to believe that some people saw that because audiences are not dub. They are incredibly smart. And as Patti LuPone said, "If they are dumb you can make 'em smart." Les Mis treats their audiences like dirt. There are no layers, no subtle gestures, themes, but instead it tells the audience what it wants instead of showing it.

The point is not to have Eponine sping about how much she loves Marius, but to show it and create that through interaction and book and character development. But no, we are told that she loves him and it is 1000 times less powerful.

Ever heard the saying, "Show DON'T tell?"

Updated On: 12/8/04 at 01:30 PM

THANK YOU GHERBERT. The difference between broadway and Les Miserables(and wildhorn, for that matter) is extreme.

It destroyed. You are right.

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BSoBW2,

The thing is I cannot live in the fifties because I am only a teenager like the rest of the people on these boards.

But I have searched and researched and read and listened and asked and watched the real great musicals my whole life. And although I may just be a kid I know what REAL Broadway was. Because the Broadway I have been looking for existed only before I was born and that has killed me my whole life.

So there. Call me a purist or narrow-minded, but also call me right. Les Mis destroyed what I loved so much and what the children and the adults and me and everyone should still enjoy today. And that is a fact.

haha one of the biggest complaints I always had when going to see Les Miserables was that it was not loud enough...

Wildhorn is the result of Les Mis, so misterchoi is absolutely correct in stating that he is in the same class a Les Mis.

Wildhorn is worse because he attempts to make his Cliff Notes version of works in the public domain legitimate musical when all they really are are ridiculous displays of his inadequacy as a composer.

No I am not a big fan of The Producers. That's another thread, however.

I AM however a fan of Nathan Lane's performance. There is a grave difference.

Lane gave a real Broadway star performance, another thing that Les Mis and Miss Saigon destroyed: Broadway stardom. The Producers itself is just an extended theatre in-joke, but Lane gives a performance that is worthy of recognition.

Well, I am going to stop arguing. Broadway has to change with the times. The old "Follies" style musicals are not as big as they used to be, sorry. If they were, there would be more of them on Broadway.

Hollywood changed, Broadway changes.

Les Mis the book is a wonderful piece of literature, just not material for a musical at all.

And I LOVE Cabaret and the current revival was very good. It is not dark shows that I have a problem with, just when they are down-trodden and ugly pieces of theatre like Les Mis.

Revivals are not good for Broadway for another reason, but the recent revival accomplished re-defining a show and giving it a new feeling and audience and that is what a revival do.

But revivals trhemselves suck the life out of Broadway. They are wonderful sometimes, but that is what City Center used to be for. Broadway is a place where new work is developed and created, not a place to rehash old material, which is why I do not like songbook revues or shows like Mamma Mia! and All Shook Up. The occasional revival that works to really rediscover an old show is good and has been done since the 50's, really beginning with the 1952 revival of Pal Joey.

Degrading...to Broadway?

Explain POTO, then.

Well, 15-20 years - I better be seeing a Les Mis revival. Besides, if the show were so bad, it would not have a rememberance tomb outside of the Imperial theatre.

Accept it, Broadway is changing.

And Les Mis may not be classic Broadway, but it is classic new-Broadway. And new-Broadway is better.

so pretty much there isn't enough dancing?

It's about time you posted BSoBW -

Heartache - are your insane?

Stead and sing? you dumba$$ - it's an opera, the whole thing is singing! There's no dancing - the best part - I would kill myself if there were another TAP SHOW!

Thanks a lot, BlueWizard, you took all my arguements!

gheartache is just retarded, this is a PRO LES MIS thread - go away before someone pushes you off the barricade - you call a high horse!

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And further more, I would not argue so adamantly if I thought that you had a real comprehensive knowlegde and view of ALL of musical theatre. That's The Black Crook to The Ziegfeld Follies to No No Nannette to Pal Joey to Oklahoma! to Carousel to Guys and Dolls to The Pajama Game to My Fair Lady to West Side Story to Gypsy to Hello, Dolly! to Fiddler on the Roof to Cabaret to Promises, Promises to Hair to Company to Follies to A Little Night Music to A Chorus Line to Chicago to On the Twentieth Century to 42nd Street to Cats to Nine to Dreamgirls to Sunday in the Park with George to La Cage aux Folles to Les Miserables to The Phantom of the Opera to Grand Hotel to Rent to The Producers to The Full Monty to Avenue Q (and I may have forgotten a few and some are out of order cause this is off the top of my head) and everything in between!!!!!

And I am not saying that you don't have a grasp on what musical theatre is and for all I know you may very well have all that knowledge but I was not originally objecting to people liking Les Mis, I was saying that people are whining "Broadway is chaging! Broadway is changing!" when they don't have the slightest clue what it changed from!!!!!! So you can sit there and say, "Broadway is changing" under your breath as many times as you liked, but what I am objecting to and fighting is people knowing and only paying attention to musical from 1987 on when the wealth and the bulk and the best work was done decades before.

And if that could happen I would be happier already.

Updated On: 12/8/04 at 02:32 PM