Les Miserables

Les Miserables is one of those sacred shows for me. I first saw it as a seventh grader in St. Louis, on a French class field trip. My kid sister was born months earlier so she effectively spent her first five years as my own private audience for various Eponine/Fantine Broadway fantasies. The music remains cherished in my family. As is always the case, a lifetime of love makes a person a harsh critic. And as I've never seen the new staging of Les Mis, I was both excited and wary of Hennepin Theatre Trust's run of the show. But my concern was ill-placed.  If anything, I'm left wondering what it is I loved so much about the last staging. The new staging is tighter, cleaner, and more intimate.  While I found the former spinning stage centerpiece in the old staging novel, I never missed it in the new. The play of lights and backdrop provided the necessary movement for periods of transition and the use of shadow and single, direct illumination at key moments proved visually and emotionally powerful. Almost every major character's vocal performance was stunning, with only Marius proving to be a bit weak in certain points.  But even his performance, which was somewhat whiny and unmanly to me on the whole, brought chills during Empty Chairs at Empty Tables. Played by Devin Ilaw, Marius seemed to age and deepen in that one song, haunted by his fallen comrades.  Apropos for the story, of course, but I would have preferred a bit more of that depth early on. Fantine's heartache was the most palpable for me, her staccato sung statements perfectly balancing with the violent desolation wrapped in I Dreamed a Dream. Her love for her daughter and her desperate attempt to provide for her are tearjerkers, so come prepared. Les Mis is not Les Mis without a gut-punching Valjean, and Peter Lockyer delivers. Those who've seen the recent movie will recognize their Valjean, shaved, scarred head and all, at the play's beginning.  Valjean's transformation, his struggle to both escape and embrace his identity, feels organic and lushly defined.  Every note, every word flows from a real, identifiable personality onstage. Part of this is to the credit of a beautifully written book and characters developed over years and years of musical workmanship, but much is owed to the actor embodying the role. Lockyer expertly delivers the humanness of our hero, a broken man who clambers out of a bed of unfair consequences to attempt a life worth living. But the revelation to me in this show was not Valjean or Fantine, beautiful performances though they were.  Javert was the killer for me.  This could be personal as I've honestly been dismissive of Javert.  He has always felt like a cookie-cutter tightly wound bully of a bad guy and that cookie-cutter nature made him boring.  But Andrew Varela's Javert is awe-inspiring! His guttural-without-being-growling tone provides the perfect canvas upon which one paints the opposing forces working in these men.  For the first time, I felt truly sorry for Javert, and ached for his confusion upon Valjean's dismissal of him as a man "just doing his duty." A pursuit of justice is certainly a noble duty and Varela expertly walks that line of a man both driven by and enslaved by his sense of righteousness. Whether you're a newbie to the Les Mis experience, a recent fan of the movie, or a long-suffering devotee who knows every word to every song like myself, this performance provides all the dark, heart-wrenching, tear-soaked power that you desire. It's a do-not-miss. Follow me on Twitter @TheMinneapolite