What a Journey - Les Misérables Review - Lennox Tan

Lennox Tan

Les Misérables

What a Journey

Have you ever procrastinated on your work and then found out later that you had too much work and not enough time? Well then you can relate to Les Misérables. Being one of the most popular musicals of all time, Les Misérables, directed by Robert Hossein, dates back to 1862 as an adaption of Victor Hugo’s novel, “Les Misérables”, before opening on Broadway on March 12, 1987. Dating back to the French revolution, Les Misérables portrays the journey of Jean Valjean, an escaped prisoner, who takes in a factory worker’s daughter. However, while being a complete play with a stunning execution, a functional plot can be debated upon. 

Despite the plot, I’ve never seen such a powerful execution. The characters were well-developed and were given their childhood backstory, which is not something that you’d usually see in a musical. The orchestra played flawlessly and I especially enjoyed the vocals of Hayden Tee, who plays the main antagonist Javert, when he sang the song “Stars”. Most notably, Christine Heesun Hwang who plays Eponine, a poor girl whose wish didn’t come true, sang “On My Own” and “A Little Fall of Rain '' with passion and emotion that resonated within the theater. Most emotional performances didn’t have much dance, but made the performances more about the character themselves and added more meaning to the songs. 

The songs and overall play were also backed by impressive lighting techniques and quickly changing sets that I would’ve never thought possible on stage. The costumes and overall atmosphere of each scene perfectly fit a village-like historical time, and the lighting made each scene more realistic and clear. The lighting also contributed more to deepen the emotions of the songs, as during performances there wasn’t much showing off done with the lighting, and the focus was on the actual performance and character instead. 

The various times skips were also an interesting component towards this play. Les Misérables portrays the life of various characters through childhood to adulthood, and is easily able to keep the plot going with multiple time skips. However, the clean transitions with these time differences may have backfired and resulted in a slightly confusing aftermath, as it was difficult to realize that there was a time skip and which characters in the past corresponded to the characters presently shown. Therefore the generation of the plot was initially confusing, and made it difficult to understand what and why something was happening. 

Les Misérables was an impressive performance, with a talented cast and clear atmosphere demonstrated throughout each scene. However, the initially confusing plot line with time skips allowed the emotions in the later scenes to be somewhat nullified. I would’ve enjoyed there to be a song for each main character talking about their backstory instead of showing the entire backstory itself. As a result, Les Misérables isn’t a fairly emotional play.