Arts Review of Les Miserables

Arts Review of Les Miserables

Les Miserables is memorable to me because it was the first and only play I saw at the Fisher Theatre in Detroit, MI. It was a memorable experience for both good and bad reasons. In my mind’s eye I can still see the revolving sets as Victor Hugo’s novel about love and war came to life with smoke all around and the hero, Jean Valjean (Alexander Gemignani), averting disaster in location after location. And I sadly still remember the adventure after the show getting back to my car. Yes, I enjoyed the play, Les Miserables, but I will never return to watch another show at the Fisher Theatre ever again.

The play depicts the extremes of good and evil, the best and worst of human nature, and just how far people will go when determined by the need to survive, for love and for faith. It starts with Claude-Michel Schonberg’s riveting score and tells the tale of an unjustly persecuted fugitive Jena Valjean secretly being released from prison following being sentenced there 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread by Javert. Valjean seizes the opportunity at a new life and lives under a new name and becomes a successful mayor of a small town. He adopts a bastard child, Cosette, who grows up and falls in love with a boy named Marius. Marius heads off to fight in student revolution of 1832 and is wounded in action. The plot picks up when Valjean sets off to save Marius for Cosette while his lifelong adversary Javert has captured another man and has him facing life imprisonment for Valjean’s crimes. Its time for the hero Jean Valjean to make a choice.

Gemignani’s version of “Bring him Home” was powerful and reminded me of Ted Neeley’s “Gethsemane” playing Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar. I loved the characters Thenardier and his wife. Their songs “Beggars at the Feast” and “Master of the House” were delightful and well needed to add laughs to the long show much like the brothers in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor...