#1
Posted: 11/9/06 at 6:40pm
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/LesMiz2006.html
Mixed-to-Negative
"The spirit that once made Trevor Nunn and John Caird's adaptation of Victor Hugo's expansive novel a transcendent hit with millions across the globe has not reemerged with the design sketches and blocking notes. For that to happen, those behind this weary resurrection - producer Cameron Mackintosh and directors Nunn and Caird included, would need to view this show as a story worth telling freshly and cleanly, not a cash cow still ripe for the milking.
Unfortunately, aside from the cast size (nearly 40 performers), practically everything here screams bargain-basement reproduction. In most of its casting, in the way it looks, and especially in the way it sounds, this production feels as if it's been cobbled together from preexisting parts to create an extraordinarily average Les Misérables experience.
That might be fine for the eighth replacement company in the sixth year of the third national tour. But with Broadway know-how and, more importantly, Broadway ticket prices at play, audiences deserve better than an anemic mounting in which hardly a noteworthy new idea has been allowed to creep into the staging or characterizations and the orchestrations have been reduced to absurdly anorexic levels..."
....I remember saying something like that....
As far as Daphne:
"Rubin-Vega is more complicated. While she's both more fiery and more brittle than most Fantines, and better capable of navigating the intricate series of scenes leading her from factory to whoredom to deathbed, her rather ragged vocals are sure to disappoint those who expect Fantine's "I Dreamed a Dream" to set off seismometers in neighboring states. Her performance, however, is never less than interesting."
Mixed-to-Negative
"The spirit that once made Trevor Nunn and John Caird's adaptation of Victor Hugo's expansive novel a transcendent hit with millions across the globe has not reemerged with the design sketches and blocking notes. For that to happen, those behind this weary resurrection - producer Cameron Mackintosh and directors Nunn and Caird included, would need to view this show as a story worth telling freshly and cleanly, not a cash cow still ripe for the milking.
Unfortunately, aside from the cast size (nearly 40 performers), practically everything here screams bargain-basement reproduction. In most of its casting, in the way it looks, and especially in the way it sounds, this production feels as if it's been cobbled together from preexisting parts to create an extraordinarily average Les Misérables experience.
That might be fine for the eighth replacement company in the sixth year of the third national tour. But with Broadway know-how and, more importantly, Broadway ticket prices at play, audiences deserve better than an anemic mounting in which hardly a noteworthy new idea has been allowed to creep into the staging or characterizations and the orchestrations have been reduced to absurdly anorexic levels..."
....I remember saying something like that....
As far as Daphne:
"Rubin-Vega is more complicated. While she's both more fiery and more brittle than most Fantines, and better capable of navigating the intricate series of scenes leading her from factory to whoredom to deathbed, her rather ragged vocals are sure to disappoint those who expect Fantine's "I Dreamed a Dream" to set off seismometers in neighboring states. Her performance, however, is never less than interesting."
Updated On: 11/9/06 at 06:40 PM
