- #Cast of pbs les miserables 25th anniversary concert movie#
- #Cast of pbs les miserables 25th anniversary concert full#
Instead, Jenny Galloway and Matt Lucas really focused on the characters, providing laughs for sure, but also some serious chills when they become most evil. On the other hand, the concert staging forces the Thenardiers to do much less over playing and mugging, which has become the unfortunate norm in recent years. If you weren't familiar with the actual show, you probably had no idea he was committing suicide. Only because of the concert staging itself, did his big number, "Stars" suffer in any way. Norm Lewis (Javert) was in sturdy control of his instrument here and delivers a sharp, tough as nails performance as the unbending inspector. I love live performance for this very reason. He gets a mid show ovation for "Bring Him Home," and he looks visibly shaken by the response.
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His wide eyed facial expressions offer a larger than normal take on the emotions of the character, but considering what he has to perform in front of it is easy to get used to and look past.
![cast of pbs les miserables 25th anniversary concert cast of pbs les miserables 25th anniversary concert](http://d1qbemlbhjecig.cloudfront.net/prod/blog/20150831_175438_480863_pick-your-friends5resizedforaboutpbs.png)
Alfie Boe (Jean Valjean) delivers a tour de force performance, nicely balancing an operatic quality with a more down to earth delivery. Everyone, of course has their preferences (I don't care at all for Colm Wilkinson as Valjean, and I adore Merwin Foard as Javert, for example.) but I think it would be hard to quibble about the level of talent here. The performance itself features thoroughly talented performers, probably the best they could get across the board. In perhaps the most epic of curtain calls ever, members of the original 1985 London cast, the current company of the original production, which is still running in the West End, AND a 2010 new production company, all take the stage to sing several numbers, including "Bring Him Home," "One Day More," and with hundreds of school children who have performed the school version of the show, "Do You Hear the People Sing?" It is, in and of itself, a grand and glorious production. Second, the company itself features over 550 actors, singers and musicians. There are 3 giant screens that project images, film footage and live camera shots of the soloists, and a dozen or more light bridges on the stage alone that move and tilt, forming "the barricade." (There is extensive lighting on the seating areas as well.)
#Cast of pbs les miserables 25th anniversary concert full#
The stage is enormous, large enough to fully seat a several hundred member choir, a full symphony orchestra, and a setting and stage that can fit a hundred member cast. Although the exact number of seats for this specific event was not available (rumored to be over 18,000 per show), depending upon the event, 23,000 people at a time can attend. And so, after the Barbican, the West End, two runs on Broadway, several national and international tours, and a rumored translation into Martian, we have arrived 25 years later at an anniversary that has to date never been equalled in terms of presentation.įirst, the enormous The O2 Arena is the venue, and the show was filmed over the course of a two performance sold-out run. It seemed that, in fact, misery loves company, and a love story, and a rallying around a cause, and the triumph of moral right over legal right. The very people that the show was about - common, everyday folk, not the upper echelons of theatre snobbery. And so its fate, it seemed, was sealed.īut a funny thing happened. Critics ravaged its length, its simplification of themes and characters, its "atrocious translation," and the sheer audacity of trying to bring such an epic downer to the stage. In 1985, clocking in at over 3 and a half hours in length, the show opened at the Barbican Theatre, and it was not a success - a fact that seems to get glossed over in its rosy colored history. But nothing really prepared the world for the epic piece of musical theatre it would become.
#Cast of pbs les miserables 25th anniversary concert movie#
First Victor Hugo's novel, then countless movie adaptations and even a PBS version. From the outset, Les Miserables has been epic.