'Our Mrs. Reynolds'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
That may be why I avoided Les Mis for so long. I love it to pieces now. I tried Cats...but nope, not for me. And I love, adore, cherish musicals.
My father is one of those who thinks musicals are not serious business but when ACT did Urinetown and Phantom he loved them. I think he even saw Jersey Boys at ACT. I guess if it is on THAT stage, it is ok, but if it is at the Golden Gate Theater or the Orpheum, then it isn't worthy.
I was immersed in the musical theater culture in New York pretty heavily, and most people in that culture had a decent, if occasionally grudging, respect for Les Miz. I'd say that in the opinion of most people I met, it was by far the best of the 1980s British mega-musicals. That's certainly my opinion.
A lot of people didn't really like that genre much at all, though. Compared to traditional musical comedies or more sparse clever Sondheimian musicals, the British spectacle mega-musicals like Phantom, Cats, Les Miz, and Miss Saigon, as well as some of the other BIG AND SERIOUS musicals they spawned (Jekyl and Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel) simply feel too earnest, over-the-top, bombastic, commercial, and melodramatic. I will also say that when they "revived" Les Miz three years after it closed with nearly the exact same set (but an unfortunate series of cuts that greatly reduced the power of the show in my opinion) it felt crass and stupid, and definitely undermined some of the grudging respect that was there.
Personally, I always thought the mega-musicals got a bad rap. In their heyday, they were popular because they fit the time AND had something good going for them (well, except Miss Saigon, which is the Michael Bay movie of musicals). And a lot of people associate that level of melodrama and spectacle with Broadway musicals - now they mostly get it through slightly more comedic or Disney big shows like Wicked, Mary Poppins, The (also feeling sadly dated) Lion King, Billy Elliot, etc, but it's the same idea.
Of course, plenty of people in the scene don't like any of those either. But I think that pretty much does boil down to too-popular-to-be-cool.
when ACT did Urinetown and Phantom
Wow, I'm not sure I can think of two more dissimilar musicals.
Les Miz bothers some people raised on Rogers and Hammerstein style musicals with distinct individual songs and dialouge between them.
Les Miz is more in the style of operetta like Gilbert and Sullivan. It's a more European tradition. There are melodies and motifs that repeat throughout, rather than stand alone numbers.
Even though "I dreamed a dream", "on my own", and "Empty chairs and empty tables" are regarded as singular moments, the melodies are used multiple times. For instance, the Bishop welcomes Valjean into his home with the same melody as "Empty chairs and empty tables".
This kind of thing put me off of it at first. But when I read more about how it was conceived, I warmed up to it. It's rather like "Jesus-Christ, Superstar" in that it started as a concept album by two French men, just like JCS was a concept album at first.
Anyway, I've watched the 10th and 25th Anniversary concerts a couple of times since I've seen the movie. I think the guy who sings Valjean in the 25th is better than Willkinson vocally.
Les Miz is more in the style of operetta like Gilbert and Sullivan. It's a more European tradition.
Especially given that it blatantly steals from Puccini.
After cutting, pasting and reformatting, I've gotta concur with Scola. I wish that review wasn't done Hulk style because it is one of the best pieces of film criticism I've read in a while. Seriously - well worth reading, however you can manage to do it.
I changed case to sentence case, ran it through Instapaper and then sent it to evernote. It isn't perfect but it has many paragraphs and is readable.
when ACT did Urinetown and Phantom
Wow, I'm not sure I can think of two more dissimilar musicals.
Wait till they bring out the mashup, Phantom Urine.
That craven toilet maven....of the niiiiiiiiiiight
I think most people *on* Broadway at the time had respect for the mega-spectacles because they knew how much damn work the people in them were doing. Even if you hate everything about the music in Cats, it was impossible to say the people who created it onstage every night weren't incredibly talented and working their butts off.
when ACT did Urinetown and Phantom
Wow, I'm not sure I can think of two more dissimilar musicals.
Sure you can! Assassins and South Pacific! Secret Garden and Debbie Does Dallas!
I grew up immersed in traditional musical theatre, so any disdain I expressed for the art form was always a sort of rebellion.