Les Miserables describes pretty much anybody’s drive into Chicago from the suburbs.
So I was in the right mood for seeing the final leg of the current national tour of Les Miserables at the Cadillac Palace Theatre. It plays there through Sunday, May 24.
I first saw this pop opera decades ago when I took my mom downtown to see it for her Mother’s Day gift. What mom wouldn’t like a musical based on the classic, 1,500-page Victor Hugo novel from 1862? One featuring human trafficking, graft, corruption, greed, obsession, child abuse, political violence murder, suicide and a few dick jokes thrown in for good measure? OK, there’s young romance, unrequited love and Jean Valjean, the dreamy, saintly leading role for a hunk, plus all that singing.
Given the above I was still slightly surprised when a buddy told me he once sat through a version of Les Miz a teacher friend of his was involved with, a variation for kids. That seemed like something some PTA somewhere in Florida would have worked to ban so they could get social media attention and go on cable news to whine about how oppressed they are.
Anyway, since I was crabby from my drive – and a 3-hour show stood ahead of us just down the block – my theater-going pal and I hit City Social for a bite to eat beforehand.
Yes, there was an irony about dining before seeing a musical where the lead character is a guy who spent time in prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s hungry kids. In fact, it seemed the cheery restaurant drew a good number of young, fresh-faced youngsters there with their friends or parents to grab from grub before the show.
On the short walk back to the Cadillac Palace, we heard singing coming from somewhere. A young woman – probably a student at one of the downtown colleges – had set up an amp with backing tracks and was doing show tune karaoke. She had her resume and social media links handy.
Who did she think would hire her? She didn’t belt out any protest tunes, which would have made her busking fitting for the play. But we only heard her for a smidgen. (Smidgen seems like a Les Miserables word, doesn’t it?)
Once in the lobby, nobody was selling any bread along with the iconic Les Miserables t-shirt and other tchotchkes.
Nobody was dressed like a French peasant, or in a blocked bicorn hat or as if they were going to take part in the ill-fated, anti-monarchist June Rebellion of 1832. That is, no cosplayers, but for a guy in a top hat that made him look like Abe Lincoln’s tubby brother.
Plopped in my seat, I wondered if the guy who played Javert – Valjean’s central, stalking nemesis – would have a better voice than Russell Crowe did in the movie version of Les Miserables, which I saw 13 years ago. Russell’s a method singer. He was nominated for an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind, not for A Beautiful Voice.
Of course, everyone in this tour had the great vocal chops needed to be in work where not a word is spoken. I marveled at the training involved.
It’s also wondrous how far stage craft and audio technology have come since Les Miserables made its way from France to make its Broadway debut in 1987. Imagine, too, a time when no old guy sitting a couple seats away would be checking the time on his cellphone every 10 minutes. Those were the days!
I also had forgotten how frenetically paced a show based on a really long novel was. Les Miserables is an aerobic workout for the cast and the audience. (Is that line stolen from a poster for the production? If not, it should be on one.)
Once the music began, it reminded me of what Les Miserables hath wrought. While this sort of thing may have started with Jesus Christ Superstar, Les Miz certainly took a certain type of megamusical theater and of singing to new levels. Or at least contributed to it.
Not that Broadway was ever particularly fond of subtlety. But Les Miz was part and parcel of the era of maximalist works. The over-the-top Phantom of the Opera first hit Broadway in 1988, just a year after Les Miz.
Then there’s the irony of a big budget musical like Les Miz dealing with themes related to abject poverty.
Les Miserables and Phantom also laid the groundwork for PBS Pledge Drive-friendly productions of a different ilk, namely Irish dance and/or music offerings. Those include Riverdance, Lord of the Dance, Celtic Woman, Celtic Thunder and the like.
Then there’s the musical style. Whitney Houston was big in 1987, too. So her, plus Les Miserables – then Celine Dione just a couple years later – laid the foundation for decades to come of a particularly dominant strain of adult contemporary music.
You know it when you hear it. Lush orchestral accompaniment. Weepy ballads. Soft parts followed by loud parts. Lots and lots of vocal gymnastics on display. Reverb. Not just walls, but halls of sound.
The likes of Michael Bolton, Richard Marx and Kenny Freaking G fit this late 80s mold, too.
Ok, maybe the Pixies and Nirvana adapted this to rock. Or not.
But Nirvana didn’t lead to American Idol, The Voice or anything else involving Simon Cowell.
Aye, in the spirit of Jean Valjean, I hope one day I can find it in my heart to absolve Les Miz for the above.
Speaking of the kindly, forgiving hero of Les Miserables, the late 80s also saw Barney the Dinosaur unleashed upon the world. On the opposite side of the pop culture tar pit stood Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko. The villain with the slick backed hair uttered the “greed is good” mantra in the movie Wall Street. To some, though, Gekko was a hero.
The internet amplifies that dichotomy today. Whatever the hell the manosphere is, the techbro oligarchy and all the social media noisemakers bully the easily-mocked Barneys.
Maybe that’s why Les Miz remains popular today. It’s downright Hallmark romantic to believe grace, compassion and kindness are what the world needs now. And that’s exactly what the world does need and always has.
On a planet where big bucks bad guys believe empathy is weakness: Fight the power with power ballads!
Protests obviously aren’t passée these days, A good many, if not most recent ones stateside have been tame. At the same time, the most recent near-riots here and elsewhere involved throngs swarming in front of Swatch stores to be the first folks to buy a $400 pocket watch. Hooray for materialism!!
The things I think about when I watch a musical, eh? You didn’t really expect me to review it, did you?
Anyway, on the way out of the theater, we smelled what seemed to be soup. Great marketing? Nah. It was a street vendor selling sausages with grilled onions.
In the parking garage elevator, I joked to strangers. Les Miserables antagonist, the buy-the-book Inspector Javert, wasn’t really a bad guy. He was just misunderstood. And he was just doing his job.
(Plus, why the hell did he go by just one name? I thought that started with Cher. No wonder he was so frustrated. Nobody even bothered to give him a first name. That’s the part I didn’t say out loud.)
Uneasy laughter ensued. My buddy told me afterward that one of the women in the elevator with us was wearing a 24601 t-shirt, that being the prisoner number for Jean Valjean. C’est la vie!
On the way home, stuck in construction traffic, I thought about various ways you could rewrite and set Les Miserables. A few days later I wasted gallons of water having AI do that for me.
Poor AI didn’t understand when I asked it to come up with a version of Les Miserables starring Barney.
Then I asked AI to make an image of Barney starring in the musical. That it could do.
Sigh.
Where’s our Victor Hugo?
AI didn’t understand that question either, but did let me know where he’s buried.
So maybe there’s hope for us yet.
Love the wit