Les Miserables musical review

Ivan Kapkov

IB Literature & Performance

Ms. Guarino

Les Miserables

Last Friday 18/02/23I attended a musical Les Miserables performed in Black Box by students in my school. Les Misérables, or better known as Les Mis, is a musical based on the novel of the same name by French poet and playwright, Victor Hugo. The plot of this musical is based on a story of convict Jean Valjean who was released from a French prison after serving nineteen years for stealing and attending to escape prison. After Valjean get released from prison his many obstacles on his way those contain finding jobs and place to stay: however,  no one is willing to give him shelter because he is an ex-convict. Valjean finds a church where the kindly bishop of Digne. Myriel treats Valjean with kindness, and Valjean repays the bishop by stealing his silverware. Trying to run away with the silver he gets caught by police, Myriel covers for him, claiming that the silverware was a gift. After that Valjean makes him promise to become an honest man. Eager to fulfil his promise, Valjean masks his identity and enters the town of Montreuil-sur-mer. Under the assumed name of Madeleine, Valjean invents an ingenious manufacturing process that brings the town prosperity. He eventually becomes the town’s mayor.  Valjean meats Javert who could see the differences between the prisoner that escaped years ago and his new identity as a mayor. Javert desires to bring Valjean back to prison. Eight years later, Valjean becomes the guardian of a child named Cosette after her mother's death, the decision changes their lives forever.  But Javert's decisions means that peace will be a long time coming.

  The major themes of this musical are: judgment on someone past, poverty, justice, and love, and the transformation of Valjean into a new person. This social shows that we can’t judge people on their past we need to judge them on who they become. Javert spends the whole story chasing Valjean because of the crimes that he committed in the past, and he is unable to see who he has become. Jean Valjean transformed from a hardened criminal into a representative of the community. He makes a big sacrifice by giving his adopted daughter Cosette happiness with Marius and losing her to the man she loves. Les Miserables is a musical that contains only songs without any dialogue between the characters. During the show, I could see how much they were working on the production and how much time they spent on staging. The costumes were originally from the musical so that the audience who didn’t know the plot of the musical could understand the time period and the culture of that time. The lightning and staging were constantly changed during the breaks what gave the audience the idea of what and where it was happening. Every play, story, or musical has its own main or highlighted characters. This musical has a lot of characters that played a big role in this play like Enjolras, Bishop Myriel, Thenardier, Azelma but this story wasn't talking about them they were just a small details that constantly brought ideas to the plot. The main character like Jean Valjean, Cosette, Fantine, Inspector Javert, and Marius Pontmercy made the story as interesting and valuable as it is. The character that showed the soul of this musical is Gavroche, who is a little boy and a revolutionary.  He became my favourite character by showing me how brave he is and of what he did in the last scene by getting killed but making people fight for their rights. The actor Daniel Huttlestone did a good job for his age and expressed his feeling very well by showing us how much he loves his country. 

  I knew the plot of this musical by watching the full movie and considering that characters weren’t played by professional artists this musical was an amazing experience to spend my time on. There were little details that would be hard for me to understand if I didn’t know the plot of this musical; for example, the age changes between the characters it was hard to understand if it was the same character with different age or it was a completely different character. Overall students did a great job of embracing their characters feeling throughout the songs and showing the audience the soul of the play.