Hello
my lovelies! As you know I saw the new revival of Les Miserables recently and absolutely loved it. I know that I’ve
mentioned this a few times before but Les
Mis was the show that got me hooked on musical theater and now with the
revival recently taking it's Broadway bow I wanted to share with you all my personal Les Mis story.
I
was twelve years old and in the 6th grade the first time I saw Les Mis. Up until then, I knew a little
bit about the world that is Broadway and musical theater. As I mentioned in my
recent post about Aladdin, my first
cast recording was of Beauty and the
Beast. I worshipped Susan Eagan, knew all about the Broadway production of The Lion King after an obsessive phase
where we used the music for a dance camp production when I was 10, I had memorized
the words to “Happy Talk” and “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair”
from South Pacific by the time I was
six and had seen many movie musicals. My knowledge of theater was somewhat
limited and I had only really seen the touring company of Beauty and the Beast when I was nine. But then I saw Les Mis and not to sound over dramatic
but it changed my life.
It
was a production at my school at the time and they were known for putting on
some of the best productions in the area often times selling out performances.
I went with one of my friends and her parents and we thought that we were so
grown up going to see this show that we honestly knew very little about. By the
end of the night I was a stunned little 12 year old that was wondering what I
had been missing out on for so long.
When
I got home that night I plopped myself down at the family computer and started
to look for the music to listen to again and again-with this being around 2005
the search wasn’t that um extensive. The next morning over my bowl of Special K
cereal I went on and on about the show to my mom saying how amazing it was and
how much I loved the music. She asked me who my favorite character was
expecting that I would say Cosette and I immediately told her that it was
Eponine cause I thought that she was the best. In the coming months I borrowed
a VHS of the 10th anniversary concert from my public library, which
I watched a number of times enthralled by brilliance that is Colm Wilkinson and
Lea Salonga. I began to check all of the cast albums out of the public library
and read anything and everything about theater that I could get my hands on. As
I grew older and as the Internet really developed with YouTube and other such
sites I delved further into the world of musical theater. I started listening
to more show tunes regularly to the point that I now have a number of cast
albums memorized and would watch countless performance videos on YouTube. Fun
story when I was about 14 I memorized the choreography for “You Can’t Stop the
Beat” after watching the video of the original cast of Hairspray’s performance on NBC News Today.
Broadway
quickly became more than just a phase for me but something that I loved and was
passionate about. Yes, it was definitely something that most kids my age didn’t
know or for that matter care about, but that didn’t faze me one bit. I loved
that it made me unique for loving something that was uncharted territory for
most as it wasn’t music that was played on the radio. I reveled in the idea of
getting my hands on new cast albums and books, a playbill vintage or new was
treated like gold and souvenir programs were carefully stored in my dresser
drawers. The obsession or passion whatever you want to call it even spilled
over into my schoolwork. In my junior year of high school my English class was
British Literature and for our research paper, my teacher said, “I do not want
to see one more paper about The Beatles”
and most of the class groaned. But, I had no interest in writing about The Beatles; I wanted to write about The Phantom of the Opera and its influence
on theater as I explained to my teacher that it was originally a London musical
so it fits the guidelines. She said yes and later told me that it was the first
paper that she had ever read about Phantom
and she loved it! The next year, my senior year I wrote my research paper on
Rogers and Hammerstein. I moved to New York later that summer for school and so
I could see shows regularly not just the handful of times a year that I was
used to when I was able to get one of my parents to agree to go.
Why
did I just sit here and ramble on about all of this for a while that has
nothing to do with Les Mis? I fully
believe that it is because I saw that school production all those years ago. I
honestly do not think that I would sitting here at my desk typing this with Dogfight playing softly in the
background if I hadn’t went my friend to see that show. My parents aren’t
musical theater people and the only exposure that I had to it was the few cast
recordings and old movie musicals that I had seen as a kid. The signs were
there when I was growing up, but I think that I fully understood it when I saw Les Mis. Like with anything that you
love, my passion for Broadway and musical theater has helped to shape and mold
me to the person that I am today and for that I’m eternally grateful.
Barbra
Streisand once said that “You have to discover you, what you do, and trust it.”
Les Mis helped me to discover who I
am and I hope that Les Mis or any show
for that matter can do that for you.
