‘Les Misérables’ at 40: the improbable story of a success

The day after the first of “Les Misérables” at the London Barbican Theater 40 years ago this week, his creative team met for a party to make successful beginnings, with bottles of champagne decorated with special “Les Misérables” labels.

But the celebration quickly “transformed into wake”, recalled John Caird, who led production with Trevor Nunn. While the participants read the newspapers of that day, it was clear that the musical had not conquered the British theater reviews.

The evening standard rejected him as a “glum opera” more suited to Victorian era than Great Britain of the 80s. The Daily Mail deplored that Caird and Nunn have transformed the “tidal wave of emotions” in the novel by Victor Hugo “into ripples of good feeling”. It was “The Glums,” added the exam.

Adding to pressure, Cameron Mackintosh, the main producer of the show, had only 48 hours to decide whether to pay a West End transfer. If he didn’t do it, the musical would disappear after only a few weeks at the end of his Barbican race.

Fortunately for the team, criticisms did not have the last word.

“The word of mouth around the show was amazing,” recalls Caird in a recent interview at his home in the London Highgate district. The Barbican had to quickly extend its team to the box office to calls on the field of theater lovers in search of tickets.

It was “two or three days” of concern, said Caird. “Then it became clear that this thing was unstoppable.”

Today, “Les Misérables” – The story of Jean Valjean, a former condemned, being implacally prosecuted by Javert, a ruthless police officer – is an icon of musical theater. He organized more than 15,500 performances in London and was a must-have school theater programs in the United States, where long-standing tourist production is played out at the Los Angeles Theater Pantes until October 19, before hearing in Milwaukee and Indianapolis.

It was also translated into 22 languages ​​and staged in 53 countries. Next month, productions are expected to open in Madrid and Shanghai.

The idea of ​​transforming the radical novel of 1,400 pages of Victor Hugo on poverty and social upheavals in France of the 19th century into a musical comedy was in fact that of two French – the composer Claude -Michel Schönberg and the lyricist Alain Boublil – who, inspired by British and American shows, created “Les Misérables” in 1980 and set up in Paris.

About three years later, Mackintosh heard a recording of the actors and, breathtaking by music, decided to bring it to London. Caird also remembers having been “completely captured by theatricality and emotion” of songs, in particular what has become “alone” and “I Dreend a Dream”.

However, said Caird, the creative team knew that the French musical needed a overhaul: it was hardly more than a “series of paintings” and demanded that the public know the book of Hugo Inside Out.

Thus, Caird, Nunn, Schönberg and Boublil, as well as James Fenton, a poet, soon read the volume of Hugo and tried to work a new structure, finally deciding to open the musical with a scene in which Jean Valjean steals silver candles of a Bishop, only for the prelate to forgive him.

Suddenly, said Caird, the motivations of the character were clear: Valjean believed in the idea of ​​the New Testament of forgiveness, while Javert, his pursuer, joined a form of justice of the Old Testament.

“As a group of liberal humanists, we had tried to avoid each mention of religion,” said Caird, but “sewing God in the show was what animated the characters”.

Even with such breakthroughs, progress has been slow at first. Fenton, a perfectionist, took so long to write the booklet that Mackintosh had to delay the planned opening of the one -year musical, according to “The Complete Book of Les Misérables” by Edward Behr “. Finally, Herbert Kretzmer, a Libretist and critic of the Daily Mail, took over.

Caird said that the team had continuously changed the musical to rehearsals. A Friday, a few weeks before the opening, for example, they decided that actor Colm Wilkinson, the original Valjean, needed a walk to “really leave his voice on a leash”. The following Monday, Schönberg played everyone the sweet melody of “Bring Him Home”, one of the most popular songs in the musical.

Even the small changes were crucial. During a recent interview in his big house – that Caird said that the success of the musical had made possible – he led through boxes of his rehearsal notes. He stressed that the most famous song in the musical was initially open with “Do You Hear The People Sing / Song The song of common men”. During rehearsals, Kretzmer changed the words to “A Song of Angry Men”.

According to the first, Caird remembers, all the people involved thought that they had something special, so it was a bit of a shock when the criticisms did not agree.

Lyn Gardner, one of the oldest criticisms of Great Britain, was one of those who originally traveled him, writing in City Limits magazine that the musical was “sentimental old tosh”. In a recent interview, Gardner said that there had been “a lot of snobbery” around the original show, given that it was a co -production of the Royal Shakespeare company and many criticisms thought that the venerated outfit should not compete in the West End musicals.

Gardner said that she was held under her initial assessment, but now recognized that “the miserable” had many charms. “This does what all the big musicals do: it makes you feel,” she said, adding: “It doesn’t make you think much.”

In addition to the Chauven Chansons sensor and emotion, part of the attraction of “the miserables” was its political nuances, with students of students trying to overthrow the French government. In recent years, demonstrators in places like Hong Kong, Venezuela and Turkey have sang: “Do you hear people sing?”

Dann Fink, a producer who acted in the original production of Los Angeles of “Les Misérables”, said that he thought that the message of the musical “Fighting for what you think” has touched an agreement with the public. He remembers one night in June 1989 when the casting, behind the scenes during the intermission, watched the cover of the live television news from the tanks that take place in the Tiananmen square in Beijing while the Chinese government was trying to stop antigoving demonstrations led by students.

This sequence, remembers Fink, seemed to echo the story of the musical, and soon he was on stage, climbing a barricade with a flag in hand. “We ran by feeling that we had to evacuate our rage for what happened to these people in China,” recalls Fink. “We sang to empower them.”

“I have never had a more busy night in a theater,” he added.

Caird said that the political connotations of history were clear for the creative team, but in its opinion, the success of the musical was more to the universality of the characters: people fighting injustice and their own personal obstacles. “Basically, so many public members feel the same sense of fate or destiny about their own life trips,” he said.

This is really why “the miserable” lasted 40 years, said Caird, adding: “It will never disappear, isn’t it?”