Les Misérables - Sondheim Theatre

They’re not charging “just out of drama school” prices though are they.

I think audiences are entitled to expect experienced actors up on stage when they book an expensive West End show. Yes everyone has to get a foot on the ladder but if the majority of the cast are that age it makes a mockery of it.

I saw Bradley in Wicked and he did seem to shout a lot to try and make his voice sound more powerful. I assume it’s the same in Mis?

I can't believe this is even a thing to anyone anymore. The first time the ethnicities of the kids vs adults/teens didn't "match" was probably back when Natalie Toro was playing Eponine in the '80s. Nothing collapsed then and it's not now. 

it gets confusing, especially for people seeing it for the first time when they change a characters race while groing up. Would not mind Cosette being black , but would prefer to have a small black Cosette then too

apart from that, the first cast Cosette did nothing for me, the Cosettes i had the years ago all had stronger voices, the current one did not really get the high notes

I hear what you’re saying. But I believe it DOES adversely effect the quality of the show having such a uniformly young (and inexperienced) cast, especially those elevated to lead roles written for older performers. Having a main character change skin colour half way through the show without explanation is an inexplicable decision in what is meant to be a “serious” piece.

If nothing else, it causes an unnecessary distraction and feels like liberties are being taken with the piece and with the paying audience.

It’s cyclical. A producer friend was talking to me about this with regards to panto. Most of a theatre’s house each show is booked many months in advance by audience members.

Say a “badly received” show sells very well in 2018, but the audience don’t like it - they simply won’t come back next year. They’ll see something else. Then the show in 2019 is much better received critically, but your core audience haven’t booked. So your “better” show goes unseen.

Essentially this is, in my opinion, how these long runners work. There isn’t a “downswing” until the prebooking market is exhausted for that cycle. Packed houses every night to see Peter Andre as Valjean, with half the cast forgetting their lines and only two lights working. (I exaggerate)

A year or two later, that audience cycle plans their theatre. No way they’re seeing Les Mis again! Les Mis box office advance takes a huge dive and suddenly it’s at TKTS every day and offers galore. The producers realise they’ve messed up and reboot the show with a quality cast and new resident creatives.

This brilliant new cast is paying for the previous years’ weakness. Steadily people start to rave about it again and people go back. Then that cast changes and the cycle repeats.

I believe with long running musicals like LM, it’s a slow deterioration of standards over time which gets it to this point.

It's a show that has been running for 33 years - and there have been, throughout this time, many cast members who are perhaps less ideally suited to their roles than their predecessors or indeed successors.

I don't think any casting issues are as simple as the actors being much younger that they had been in the past. Michael Ball was one year out of drama school when he played Marius and Frances Ruffelle was 20 when she created Eponine, yet both actually older than the characters they were playing. As for the current Javert being 20 years too young, I believe he's 30 which is the same age as Philip Quast was when he played the role, and only two years younger than Roger Allam in the original cast. John Owen Jones was 26 when he first played Valjean - and his performance is talked about, quite rightly, in the most revered tones. I haven't seen the current cast so am not passing judgement on suitability for roles - just making the point that it can't be put down to age alone.

I can't claim to have seen it nearly as many times as some on this board, nor do I share in the complete adoration for the piece, but I've probably watched it about 15 or so times across 33 years - from the very long version at the Barbican to a couple of years ago at the Queens. I remember thinking that the Original Broadway company was a pale facsimile of the original London cast - played broadly without any subtlety or nuance - and with a Marius and Cosette who were less young lovers and more middle aged couple (I was 23 at the time and, unlike Ball and Rebecca Caine, they seemed so much older than me). I saw it a few years into the run at the Palace (with most lead roles being onto their second or third change) and thought it had become sloppy and self-indulgent with a Valjean and Javert who were both doing a lot of acting to show us how hard they were working but to very little emotional effect. It felt as though it was on its last legs. A couple of years later it was back, fresh as a daisy. And we're not anywhere near the 10th anniversary yet.

In terms of drama school graduates - it does look as though this year's intake is pretty significant. I know that at the time of the aforementioned cull of 2005 - Cameron Mackintosh wanted lots of new blood and he felt that students should look like students - not west end old timers. So since then they've been holding auditions in most of the major drama schools on an annual basis specifically to get younger actors. CML would probably argue that this is for authenticity rather than economics - but who knows.

Finally, and I apologise for the length of this post, I agree with 49thand8th that audiences can adapt and accept theatrical artifice such as a morphing Cosette (even if they talk about it in the interval). There's an awful lot in the staging of Les Miserables which is non-natural and it doesn't seem to have impacted on the success of the show. I certainly don't think such a casting/directorial decision signals the death knell any more than the lacklustre Valjean/Javert combo I saw about 30 years ago.

Once again:

The reason is matters in this particular case is because the actress in question is portraying the SAME CHARACTER, in a plot central role, who a few scenes earlier had been a little girl of a different race. The actress who is supposed to be her maternal mother in the story also bears no resemblance whatsoever. In the context of the story, it makes absolutely no sense. I reiterate, for the third time now, that my issue isn't that she is a black Cosette, but rather that the casting of a black Cosette within this cast, in the context of the story, simply makes no sense. Zero. Please try to forget any preconceived ideas of my opinions of race or equality, and look at it in simple, non-partisan terms. 

The example you gave of Billy Elliott is near-identical to the one I gave about Gary Wilmot in Chitty, as I'm sure you know if you're replying to my posts on this matter. Just a reminder, in case you actually hadn't read my reasoning, this is absolutely fine as it in no way distracts or detracts from the telling of the story. What would be weird though, would be if half-way through the second Act the car changed into a pink minibus without any in-story explanation whatsoever. 

Incidentally, Billy Elliott is now closed. In its old theatre is a hugely successful and diversely casted show called Hamilton, about a bunch of dead white guys. It's a good show. Not historically accurate, but in French revolutionary times people didn't burst into song while fighting on the streets, so 'willing suspension of disbelief' is ALWAYS in play when visiting the theatre. Both tell a good story in their own style and both are phenomenally popular.

Having re-read my original post (the review) I do feel I perhaps wasn't harsh enough as to how poor the performance was in general terms. The actress playing Cosette (I assume that's Amara? I'm not on first name terms with the cast there), was okay. Quite a good voice. Nothing special; out of the Cosettes I've seen, she'd be in the bottom third - by no means the worst. There were far less convincing performances elsewhere talent-wise.

As for your Joseph point, once again, does it matter if the cast are made up of different races, heights, generations and so forth? Absolutely not. The story gets told just fine regardless. 

I appreciate people get very sensitive (squeamish almost) when anybody mentions anything to do with race. For the fourth time, unless critical to the plot ala Hairspray (a show explicitly about race issues), anybody could potentially play any part in my view - as long as they were talented and right for the part performance wise. What would really piss me off would be a completely random little white child playing Cosette for a song in an all-black cast, then nobody ever mentioning it again.

It's taking liberties with the show and being incredibly self-indulgent. As I say, I don't think she was even anything special in this show. 



 

It's also incredibly insulting that you feel the need to approach a new audience member as someone delicate who needs hand-holding.

YEAH. Why doesn't Marius just GO AROUND the gate Rue Plumet, I say.