Why the "Les Miz" Movie Makes Me Happy

It’s no surprise that film critics are pooh-poohing the new movie version of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s pop opera Les Misérables.  Just as it’s no surprise that people are flocking to see it (the movie took in $18 million when it opened on Christmas Day, beating out Tom Cruise, Quentin Tarantino and the elves and wizards of “The Hobbit”).  And perhaps it’s no surprise to regular readers to hear that I’m with the people on this one.

But the latter is a bit of a surprise to me. Although it ran for 16 years on Broadway, has been performed in 43 countries and seen by some 60 million people, Les Miz, as it’s come to be known, is not my favorite musical. Just between you and me, I fell asleep when I saw the original production back in the ‘80s. 

I did do better when my theatergoing buddy Bill persuaded me to see the 2006 revival. But the storyline still confused me—which revolution is the show about?  Which pining soprano is the female lead? Which cute kid was featured in the iconic poster?

Still, I was a fan of the Victor Hugo novel, which I read in 8th grade and soul locked with in the way that you can only do with a book when you are 13 years old. Hugo’s story, whose central characters are a man imprisoned for stealing bread to feed his family and a woman forced into prostitution to support her child, is a combination of agitprop and melodrama that aims directly at middlebrows like me. 

Some highbrow critics called the book sentimental when it first came out in 1862 but it was an instant bestseller across the European continent and in America too. And its popularity with the masses has never waned. Wikipedia lists some 60 movie versions, including one in 1897 by the film pioneering Lumière bothers. And the more reliable IMDB lists at least two dozen adaptations.

The Hugo novel is nearly 1,500 pages long in the Signet paperback edition and so something has always been lost in its stage and screen translations but the tale has never been clearer to me than in this new film version, directed by Tom Hooper, who gobbled up nearly all the Oscars two years ago for "The King’s Speech" and is clearly unafraid of earnest sentiment (click here to read a story on the making of the movie).

Hooper lets the viewer know from the very first scene that this movie is a musical. Indeed, most of it is sung threw, just as the stage version was. 

Much is being made of his decision to film the singing live on the set and add the full orchestrations later in the mixing (the sound guys are probably shoo-ins for Oscars). But guess what? It works. Singing has become the language of the film, as natural and emotional as spoken dialog (click here for a piece on how they got the actors up to vocal speed).

The songs—“I Dreamed A Dream,” “Who Am I,” “Do You Hear the People Sing,” “One Day More,” “On My Own,” “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables,” “Bring Him Home”—are, of course, familiar and they’re still stirring. Loud sniffles and muffled sobs could be heard throughout the movie theater.

Hooper’s also cast the film with the kind of big names who draw big audiences.  Hugh Jackman, plays Jean Valjean, the righteous thief who redeems himself but is pursued over two decades by the relentless Inspector Javert, played by a somewhat shaky Russell Crowe.  Although he occasionally moonlights as the lead singer in his own rock band, Crowe seems ill at ease in his numbers and lacks the chops to deliver them.

On the other hand, Jackman, who’s done award-winning work in musicals in both London and New York, sounds great and looks great too. I’m not the fan girl that my friends over at the Craptacular are but, OMG, he’s a gorgeous man.

The rest of the something-for-everyone cast includes the ever-versatile Anne Hathaway, affecting (and already an Oscar frontrunner) as the prostitute Fantine; TV’s Amanda Seyfried, spot-on as Valjean’s ward Cosette; Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter bringing comic relief as the ludicrously larcenous inkeepers the Thénardiers; and the dreamy matinee idols Eddie Redmayne and Aaron Tveit as leaders of the student revolutionaries who set off the story’s climax (click here to read the Craptacular interview with Tveit).

Plus, there’s even a cameo by Colm Wilkinson, the original stage musical's Jean Valjean, now playing the priest who puts the thief on the right path to redemption.

They’re all good. 

The movie itself is still more a series of tableaux than a continuous narrative.  And the background scenery is awful.  It’s muddy in that way that bad CGI is when it’s trying to mask its mistakes. 

But none of this matters. 

The audience at my Upper West Side movie house was largely rapt, although a few people did sneak out before the 2 hour and 43 minutes film ended.  Among them was one mother who hurried her tiny daughter up the aisle as a desperate Fantine was about to give up her final bit of honor. 

So, let the critics carp.  There is a resonant connection between the poor and oppressed in 19th century France and those of us in the 21st century who are about to be poorer and more oppressed as our financial and political leaders keep leading us over fiscal cliffs.   

And if we in the 99% want to shed a few tears and grab hold of a little uplift (both of which "Les Misérables" unabashedly provides) that’s absolutely fine with me.

Another Labor Day's Ovation for Actors

Around this time last year, The New York Times ran a series of mini-profiles about blue collar actors, the folks whose names seldom appear above the title, whose faces are often only vaguely familiar. Their tales of very hard work, relatively low pay but continuing devotion to their craft made a fitting Labor Day tribute, a reminder to us theater lovers that acting is a job as well as an art. And they still do. So in case you didn’t get a chance to read those pieces when I recommended them last year, you can do so now by clicking here.

Or, if you’re in the mood this Labor Day weekend for a more uplifting and entertaining view of the journeyman actor’s life, pick up a copy of “Letters from Backstage: The Adventures of a Touring Stage Actor,” an account of 18 months in the career of the actor Michael Kostroff as he crisscrossed the country in touring productions of The Producers (he played in the ensemble and understudied the role of Max Bialystock) and Les Misérables (he was the innkeeper Thénardier) from 2002 to 2004. Kostroff (that’s what his friends call him) is perhaps best known as the sleazy lawyer to the drug kingpins in the HBO series “The Wire” but he’s also a song and dance man who has survived in show business for over 20 years and the author of a no-nonsense advice column in Back Stage newspaper called “Working Actor” (click here to check it out.)

His book, as he explains in its preface, started off as emails to his friends and eventually morphed into stories about life on the road with a big traveling show. In samizdat fashion, the friends started forwarding his accounts to their friends, cast members began asking for copies and strangers even put in requests to get on his listserv. Finally, in 2005, Kostroff collected his reports into a slim 209-page valentine to show people.

This isn’t one of those air-the-dirty-linen tell-all books. The way Kostroff tells it everyone he works with is hugely talented on stage and good company off. Alas for those of us who relish back stage gossip, the one or two exceptions don’t get named and don’t get much ink either. But in between all the bonhomie, “Letters from Backstage” offers glimpses into what hard work acting can be. Like how touring companies perform eight shows a week and then often spend their day off hustling to the next city on the itinerary. Or like how traveling cast members often have to pack hot plates, lamps and even light bulbs to create some semblance of a homey environment as they move from one economy-priced hotel to another. Or like how these actors have to prove themselves over and over again in auditions for the next part no matter how good they were in the one before.

But Kostroff, who says he didn’t get his first paying job as an actor until he was 30, refuses to complain. Like so many stage actors, he has never appeared on Broadway and yet he works steadily and is grateful for that. “Being on the road isn’t always easy, and it isn’t always fun,” he writes. “But even with the ups and downs, this is a great job. Eight times a week, we get to entertain thousands of people. It’s a job I dreamed of. One which I’m fortunate to have.”

We theater lovers are fortunate too. Actors like Kostroff are the backbone of the theater, the ones we see in regional productions, national touring companies and big Broadway hits when the stars leave after the first or second season. “In our business, working at all is, in itself, an accomplishment,” Kostroff writes. It’s an accomplishment that deserves more recognition than it gets. Kostroff is currently appearing as Max Bialystock in a Gateway Playhouse production of The Producers that is playing in Patchogue, Long Island through Sept. 13. If you see it, give him an extra round of applause for me.

The Highs and Lows of "Three Mo' Tenors"

It's not a good sign when there are empty seats on the opening night of a show. But that's how it was for Three Mo' Tenors, the staged concert that opened at the Little Shubert Theatre this past Thursday evening. The show, one of the many variations on the lucrative series of concerts that opera's golden-throated boys Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, and José Carreras launched in the '90s, features three African-American tenors performing a range of musical genres from operatic arias to Broadway show tunes.

But unlike the original trio, the Mo' tenors are unknowns. And that was the problem for me and my niece Jennifer. There are two alternating casts in this production and the three we saw—Kenneth D. Alston Jr., Phumzile Sojola and Ramone Diggs—seemed game for anything and good at much of it (click here to see excerpts from the show), but no more so than the scores of other talented singers you can hear in Broadway, off-Broadway and even off-off Broadway shows, not to mention in cabarets and clubs around New York. Shouldn't these tenors, like the ones who inspired their act, be the best around?

Director Marion J. Caffey, who created the concept for the show, has tried to make a virtue of his stars' anonymity, explaining in various interviews that classically trained black singers, as all of his performers are, have fewer opportunities and thus fewer chances to make a name for themselves. "Black tenors are not often used in operas," he has said. "So they have to sing in other styles simply to make a living." In other words, they know how to do more, or mo'. And, indeed, Three Mo’ Tenors prides itself on the number of styles its singers perform.

The evening starts off with Verdi but then quickly veers into Broadway power ballads from shows like Les Misérables, Ragtime and Jekyll & Hyde. The second act is even more pop-oriented with tributes to performers including rhythm and bluesman Ray Charles, the '70s rock band Queen and even Gladys Knight's soulful Pips, plus a round of spirituals and gospel tunes. The opening night audience loved all of it—respectfully admiring of the opera, clapping and swaying in time to the R&B numbers, waving arms in the air to Queen's stadium anthems. Even Jennifer, who can be fussy about her theater and was making it clear that she wasn't happy about the first act, got into it by the end and was taking up the singers' invitation to sing along with some of the more familiar tunes.

I love a '60s-era soul song as much as the next Baby Boomer. And I appreciate the hard work of the tenors who made quick off-stage costume changes in between their often-choreographed solo, duet and group numbers. I particularly liked Diggs, a lanky, rubber-faced charmer with quick comedic timing and a compelling stage presence. He handled every genre with a light ease and yet there was an underlying melancholy that made me wish someone would write a musical about the vaudevillian Bert Williams, the first black headliner in the Ziegfeld Follies whom W.C. Fields called "the funniest man I ever saw—and the saddest man I ever knew," and cast Diggs in the role (If you’re interested, Caryl Phillips recounts Williams' life in his wonderful novel "Dancing in the Dark").

Still, I think I might have enjoyed Three Mo' Tenors more if I lived somewhere besides New York. I'm spoiled by the incredibly high level of talent in this city and the ability to see it whenever I'd like. Other places aren't as lucky. Three Mo' Tenors has spent the last six years successfully traveling around the country and abroad. An earlier version of the show—with different tenors—was even filmed for PBS. But there's a small town feel about the show and I don't know if it can survive the big-city competition here in New York. Which may explain those empty seats on opening night.

Walking the Plank with "The Pirate Queen"

After years and years in which one person shows and two handers have made up too large a part of its diet, with even the musicals tending towards small portion productions like Grey Gardens and Avenue Q, Broadway seems to be bingeing on big cast shows this season. There are 44 actors in The Coast of Utopia, 38 in Les Misérables, and 34 in the straight play Inherit the Wind. But not even 41 hard-working singers and dancers are enough to make a satisfying meal of The Pirate Queen, the Les Miz duo Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s musical version of the story of Grace O’Malley, a 16th century Irish proto-feminist and nationalist who not only commanded a ship of pirates but maneuvered a face-to-face summit meeting with Queen Elizabeth I.

I didn’t go to the show with high expectations. I’d heard about the poor notices it got during its fall tryout in Chicago. And even though I don’t read reviews until after I’ve seen a show, I had a sense that the New York critics weren’t much happier with the changes that show doctors Richard Maltby (pitching in on the book and lyrics) and Graciela Daniele (helping out with the staging) had made for the Broadway production. So when I called to invite my niece Jennifer to see the show, I warned her that it probably wasn’t going to be the best time she’d had in the theater. Jennifer, who’s now 27, has been going to the theater since before she was old enough to read a Playbill and she has very strong opinions about what she likes (Spring Awakening) and doesn’t like (Tarzan) but she’s obsessed with the Tudor era and so I thought she might see something in the show that others hadn’t. She didn’t.

It wasn’t a total washout. We both enjoyed the Irish step-dancing numbers choreographed by the Riverdance folks, who also produced the show. And we got a kick out of the over-the-top costumes that Martin Pakledinaz created for Queen Elizabeth. But neither the book nor the music did much for us. In fact, the show proved to be the theatrical equivalent of the proverbial Chinese meal that leaves you hungry an hour later—on the bus ride home neither of us could remember even one song from the score. And if you believe New York Post theater columnist Michael Riedel, The Pirate Queen’s landlord is hungry for something else too. Riedel reports (click here to read it) that agents for Live Nation, which owns the Hilton Theater where the show is playing, recently showed the space to director Susan Stroman as a possible home for the new Mel Brooks show, Young Frankenstein. Undaunted, The Pirate Queen’s producers are maintaining their swashbuckling attitude and posting daily entries to their website. Take a peek (click here to visit it); it’s more entertaining than their show and a lot cheaper.