Les Miserables - Los Angeles

 Saw Les Mis in Los Angeles last night! Random thoughts (on this performance and just in general):

 

-the pit was awesome, maybe just good acoustics where I was sitting. very nice accompaniment.

 

-Valjean/the Bishop had some shippy fodder, like the Bishop is all helping him up and pulling him in when nobody's touched him kindly in 19 years.

 

-there's been discussion over whether "if I speak, they are condemned/if I stay silent, I am damned" is really a functional ethical system or whether Hugo needs to be more utilitarian, and anyway, I gave myself Gauvain feelings

 

-why does Cosette envision Fantine as a lady "all in white"? Fantine is blue when she's working at the factory, she only gets the white outfit once she's sick

 

-the minor bad guys (the foreman, Fantine's attacker) were great at being bad guys

 

-this Enjolras was pretty yelly (and Eponine sometimes was too)

 

-"A Heart Full of Love" featured a very...Pontmercying...Marius. He throws a stone at the window to get Cosette to come out, then begins like "A HEART FULL OF LOVE..." *buries head in hands* "I'm doing everything all wrong, oh god, for shame."

 

-Marius and Eponine are hanging around outside the gate when Valjean is like "Cosette we have to leave." Which on the one hand explains how Marius knows Cosette is leaving, but also makes Valjean look super clueless.

 

-The setting of the gate in general really portrayed Cosette's isolation

 

-Poor Eponine burns her bridges with her dad for Marius' sake, she is so doomed

 

-Javert puts on a disguise to infiltrate the barricade and it looks like a tricolor skirt thing?

 

-Gavroche flips off Javert

 

-the setting of the sewers was very good, though it was minimalist otherwise

 

-about the wider criticisms of "Turning," I think one issue with it is that it comes right after Javert's suicide. Which wraps up one of the big plotlines of the story and is a reprise of the prologue, so it feels like it should be almost the end? So the "denouement" part is way too long.

 

-they had women hugging their partners goodbye after Enjolras dismisses them at least?

 

-anyway in this Turning women brought out candles onto the stage. Then it went right into "Empty Chairs," (no chairs, no scenery, no nothing), so the ghosts came out and picked up the candles, then blew them out. At first I thought having just Marius and the ghosts would take away from the finale but the candle stuff was cool.

 

-Cosette is reading Valjean's letter during the end of the finale. Felt kind of like a Hamilton-type "legacy" thing.

 

-The bishop gives Valjean a hug in the finale, I rest my case.

Edit: forgot. I think in "Beggars at the Feast" when Thenardier was like "This one's a queer but what can you do," the man indicated stops dancing for a moment, his "girlfriend" looks at him like "...what" and he looks back like "...uhhhh." Tell me there's a canonical Ao3 tag for him?