Les Miserables (US tour 2023)

[primeideal]

Some random things I noticed about/during the current staging!

• The intro voiceover, reminiscent of "This is your king, George III" in Hamilton, was "there were not many cameras and absolutely no cell phones in 1832, so please don't use them."
• They've added a couple more lines of spoken dialogue--not much, it's obviously sung-through. But like, in the opening scene when Valjean is being rejected by the village, there's a couple kids playing chase ("nyah, you can't catch me!") and the mom protectively pulls her daughter away from Valjean. Then a verse later, a little kid is flipping his coin and Valjean grabs it out of the air and snarls at him. (This is before the bishop interaction, but he's credited as "Petit Gervais/Gavroche" in the cast list!)
• When the police are doing their "tell his reverence your story" the bishop is motioning to Baptistine or Magloire to go into the house and get the candlesticks, he's way ahead of the game.
• "sitting flat on your bum" in "At the End of the Day" got changed to "ass" which sounds more natural in a USian context.
• Fantine's part of "At the End of the Day" is a little more spoken than usual, it gets her anger across effectively. She spends the first couple verses of "I Dreamed a Dream" sitting/kneeling on the stage which just seems uncomfortable.
• In "Lovely Ladies" one of the ladies comes up to Javert when he appears like "hey! inspector! do you want to...oh okay."
• In general the entire cast just enunciated well, this sounds like damning with faint praise but it's not, I've heard a lot of musicals where the words just mush together at times? But like, you can hear them talking.
• This is one of the productions that has the "extra" Thenardier/Eponine verses/dialogue scattered throughout. (I say "extra" because the recording I semi-memorized it on doesn't have them, but several versions do.)
• Madame Thenardier's introduction (taunting Cosette and telling her to go out and get water) was more spoken than usual, which comes off as making her look super mean in her own right, not just as Monsieur Thenardier's sidekick. The "like mother, like daughter" with regards to Fantine and Cosette, then her playing with Eponine, then Eponine "going soft" by the time we see her again in Paris... :(
• Monsieur Thenardier, for his part, has an intro line about "you know what they say...in this world, you can be happy, or you can be married." Then they're super over-the-top with the acting in "Master of the House." One of the customers is a blind man carrying a birdcage. Thenardier steals his boots after he's taken them off, then steals the birdcage, then puts the birdcage in the meat grinder for "mixing up the sausages with this and that."
• When Valjean sings "there's a castle just waiting for you," he gives Cosette a doll (Catherine!)
• "Look Down" skipped the "give them all the pox" section, and Gavroche's part has the version about "this is the land that fought for liberty." During the robbery scene, someone (Montparnasse?) winds up pointing a gun at Cosette and Marius instinctively jumps in front of it, which helps establish the "love at first sight" angle.
• "Stars" was great, Javert can really sing, more stars came out verse by verse, A++.
• "General Lamarque is dead" is more downcast and less "I'm hyper excited about the revolution, guys!!"
• "I could have been a scholar, too" with Eponine grabbing Marius' book, paralleled with the book stuff about Madame Thenardier getting her name inspiration from reading novels D:
• "A Heart Full of Love": Marius climbs over the fence, throws rocks at Cosette's balcony window, she opens the door and then closes it (to go downstairs and greet him properly) during "A heart full of love...a heart full of song...I'm doing everything all wrong, oh God, for shame." Laughs ensue.
• "This is a chain we'll never break" why "chain"? Like, considering the imagery of Valjean and criminals in chains...IDK, I'm not seeing the romantic symbolism here.
• As soon as Javert shows up, identifying himself as the "scout" who will help them out, and is sent off on his "mission," Gavroche sprints after him like he's about to denounce him already but Javert leaves before he gets the chance.
• Eponine takes off her hat after Valjean addresses her as "my boy," like, "I knew the bourgeoisie were dumb but is he this dumb?"
• "A Little Fall of Rain" (ditto "Bring Him Home") has the issue where we're watching from behind the barricade, so it's just the main characters singing while everyone else is basically frozen in their positions until the last verse or so.
• Re: Javert being a spy who's incredibly bad at lying. I think there's something about the theme of lies overall--it's been pointed out that Myriel and Simplice use their social ranks to lie to cops and get away with it. In Arai's manga (which I just started) Valjean is too good and pure, he gives his extra money to make sure his nieces and nephews have enough fresh water to drink, and when his sister asks him where the money went he's like "uhhhh I had a beer at the pub with my friends." Like, part of the over-the-top false modesty is just straight-up lying on occasion? IDK. (I will have more thoughts on Arai soon but not this post.)
• Grantaire has Isaac Newton hair and is also Gavroche's sidekick. (This fanart is from a production in Poland so not the same cast, but it might be similar staging?) The fact that there's a line about "let all the women and fathers of children go from here" kind of lampshades how messed up it is they can't even get Gavroche out of the way. I choose to believe this conversation happened:

Enjolras: Grantaire, I have an important job for you.
Grantaire: Of course, anything for you.
Enjolras: Make sure Gavroche stays out of the way. Since you don't actually care about the revolution and only care about self-preservation, this should be easy.
Grantaire: Sounds good, I'm on it.
Grantaire: *drinks till he passes out*
Gavroche: Cool, I can go fight now!

I guess Enjolras and Grantaire have some gestured conversation over Marius' unconscious body and that's their way of getting closure? IDK, I didn't really see how that played out.

• Not specific to this production, but: "If there's a God above, he'd let me die instead"/"if I die, let me die! Let him live, bring him home!" are obviously parallels in terms of "Valjean and Fantine are the good guys, who pray to God on their children's behalf, instead of the messed-up (non-)religiosities of Javert and Thenardier" but..."yeah God will totally trade lives if you ask nicely" is kind of. Unfortunate implications.
• Also a parallel between "Javert, he needs a hospital" with Fantine and Marius. Javert finally recognizes he was wrong the first time and that changes his mind, regardless of his feelings about Valjean? "This boy has done no wrong" okay maybe from the apolitical Valjean's POV, but Javert is like..."he is an unlawful rebel, I was right there."
• One of the lines in Javert's suicide was repeated, that might have just been a mistake?
• Another "ghost" staging of "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables." Meh. I'm not really here for the ghosts, they're gonna come back in the finale anyway! Don't undercut that moment!
• We like to point out the nonsense timeline/lack thereof of the last couple songs, but, it occurred to me this time around that there could actually be a time gap between the reprise of "Who Am I" and the wedding. And then I remembered some discussions about "the way to fix 'Turning' would be to intercut it with Marius' recovery, to have the action show that things do improve, despite the fatalistic lyrics." And I wonder...Javert's death is kind of one of the climaxes, in terms of rising/falling action. The extended Turning/Empty Chairs/Every Day/Who Am I Reprise sequence kind of drags out the ending. Could we move Valjean's confession/farewell to right after Javert's death (maybe Marius is still badly wounded and unable to walk on his own), resolve the Javert+Valjean plotlines at the same time, and then do a more compressed Turning/Empty Chairs/Every Day timelapse leading up to the wedding? That would make it feel like Cosette actually had been mourning Valjean for some time before miraculously reuniting with him (although that doesn't solve the question of where to find him, but then, neither does the musical as it is). IDK, something to think about.
• Beggars at the Feast: original lyrics from Thenardier's intro are "this one's a queer, but what can you do." Changed to: "this one's a queer, I might try it too!" *takes the other man's hand and swoops down into an elaborate dance pose* :D 
• During the wedding dance, after the Thenardiers create a commotion, the majordomo glances down to the pit orchestra and is like "okay let's start again, un deux trois un deux trois..." A few minutes later Thenardier does the same thing.
• "Take my hand, I'll lead you to salvation" is Fantine and Eponine, but when the ensemble emerges in Barricade Heaven, the Bishop steps out of the crowd to embrace Valjean <3