Les Mis

hey i went to go see the show on opening night
as a regular theatre goer, this was actually the first production on Les Mis i had seen
i had quite high expectations of the show due to the sell out season and the overwhelming popularity of the show
however it must take a good director, strong actors/singers/dancers, backstage crew and designers to pull this one off
the main character was two dimensional almost, not giving us a chance to become fully sympathetic with him, he was boring and was poorly singing in falsetto, his voice was unable to handle it
i was constantly annyoed at the fact the director did not take in to consideration, particularly with scenes containing many cast members that audience focus wasnt adopted, so during the songs, i was confused of where to look and spent much of the time looking around the stage to find out who was singine
a strong us of tableaux were used, however after once or twice, it became overused
the kids cast couldnt sing very well, and seemed to be dancers and singers, not performers or acotrs
the sound was terrible! with the microphones coming in and out of songs, and some actors not having microphones at all were totally drained by the orchestra which was very annoying and disappointing
the two stand out performers were the characters who played the constable guy who ends up jumping off the balcony (sorry i dont know names) and the girl who endlessly loves marius but dies in the end and helps corsette (or whatever) and marius get together. their singing was beatuiful and they felt more 3-dimensional than any other character
the lighting was unadventurous, boring and did not lend it self well to the show, and the choreography was limited, i would have loved to have seen more dancing or movements rather than a step forward step backwards action which was adopted no less than 5 times.
two other stand outs were the evil characters, which acted also as comic relief which allowed us to like them and become instantly drawn to them
this performane is the 2nd i have seen from John Milson and have created very low respect for him as both shows were poorly directed, with boring blocking which led to no conflict, intesity and was at times just boring
it seems he took the approach of keeping everything minimal and didnt want to experiment or be too creative...either that or he just plainly did a half assed job
so there is my review
overall quite a poor performance, poorly directed, and terribly unadventurous or lacking in creativity
Chloe