Sally Burns said: "Jallenc32 said: "Caught the show in Philly last night. Holy backphrasing Batman. I don't know if Javert ever sung two lines in a row as written. The show has devolved into cartoon (something that's been happening for years now), but I've never seen it played this badly & broadly on a major tour.
Also the new tour orchestrations were horrible. Incredibly synth heavy with a weird piano solo in On My Own. I'm actually wondering if a couple players were out and they couldn't get subs in time. They also completely cut the exit music which I found really odd.
I saw the tour in San Francisco and I found myself getting annoyed with several aspects of the show. First, like many other Les Mis fans, I have listened to the complete symphonic recording many times over the ears so it's really noticeable to me when a production cuts anything. The biggest cut was that they shortened Castle on a Cloud by removing an entire verse ("there is a room that's full of toys"
. They also got rid of the spoken line "There's a boy climbing the barricade" when Eponine returns from delivering Marius' letter. I know they got rid of the turntable, but they couldn't show her climbing in?
I had somehow forgotten my previous complaint about the last time I saw this show on tour, which was that they increased the tempo on many of the songs. They did it again which I felt was a detriment to anyone in the audience who wasn't already familiar with the songs. At one point (I can't remember which song), I thought man, if I didn't already know all the lyrics to this song, I would have no idea what words they spit out for that song rapidfire. The most egregious example of speeding up songs was A Little Fall of Rain. If you want people to feel the impact of Eponine's death, maybe don't have the two actors racing through the song. Give the actors and the audience a second to breathe.
The lighting was so dim that in some of the larger group numbers, I couldn't tell who was actually singing because it was so dark. I think it was Red and Black where I wanted to march myself to the light board and ask them to bump the dimmers up to 60%. The lights in that scene were dim plus there was some smoke and they used some backlighting so it was almost impossible to know who was actually singing which line. The dim lighting was a problem throughout the show. In several scenes, the wash for the stage was very dim with a blue or yellow cast and the only visible people were whoever had a spotlight on them, despite the fact that there were other main characters on the stage at the same time.
Whoever was running the fog effect was overzealous. When Jean Valjean drags Marius into the tunnels, there was so much fog that the door to the tunnel was not visible. The fog was seriously about four feet high at that point. I know it's fun to play with dry ice, but calm down there!
I had the same issue with Javert as you did, @jallenc32 - the only notes that he sang as written were the big glory notes at the end of certain phrases. Everything else was willy nilly and all over the place. But after seeing Russell Crowe, I feel like I'm not allowed to complain since everyone else is a million times better than he was!
My husband agrees with you about the orchestrations. He hated some of the arrangements they used (his biggest complaint was the guitar).
Nick Cartell did a beautiful "Bring Him Home." My biggest complaint about him was that he didn't seem old enough to play Jean Valjean. The show begins at the end of his 19 year sentence and then jumps ahead eight years to when he's the mayor and then another nine years later. Even if he was only 16 when he stole that loaf of bread, that would make him 52 for the majority of the show and he obviously is nowhere near that old in real life (despite the grey hair he sports as older Valjean).
One thing I loved about the show is that SHN sent an email to all ticket holders stating that the show would start on time at 7:30pm and that there would be no late seating for the first 14 minutes of the show. The only down side was that as soon as the prologue was over, the ushers were running up and down the aisles with their flashlights on seating tons of late people during At the End of the Day."
I haven't seen Les Mis in probably 15 years, and it is among my favorite musicals. Unfortunately I'm not seeing any Goldstar discounts for the SF run, and the rush has been very hard so far.
Would you say this production is worth shelling out $100+ for? Trying to decide if I would be willing to pay full price.
