Les Misérables - Sondheim Theatre

Finally! 

We will convert them daisy24601

Just on my way home. Very enthusiastic audience and shares in kleenex must've gone up if the upper circle is anything to go by! So, so glad I got to go and say goodbye but happy with change too, I'm off to the geilgud in November for a bit of JOJ, Ball and Co and am sure I will be at the sondheim in the next year or two.
Gotta ask, did the 'queer' party goer always kiss the waiter? It got an 'immigrants we get the job done' type. Reaction!

Some of them were - Dean listed them (he did the speech) but I'm afraid I can't remember who he said was there and who he was just thanking!

I was up in the Grand Circle so couldn't see any VIPs taking their seats, and so I don't know if CM was there! He didn't get booed when mentioned in the speech though, thankfully no-one was that childish.

It was a very enthusiastic and perfectly respectful audience, and the ovation at the end was astonishing, every person in the theatre rose as one as the cast hit the last note, then the cheers continued for a good 5 minutes after the bows were done!

Some pics from curtain call here
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No although depending on the performer its like flirty but never kiss
Sam Harrison did it also at the matinee wasn't expecting him to do it for the last one. But I assume the reaction he got in the matinee encouraged him to try and snog Sam Edwards again!!

I wouldn't consider myself a huge fan of the show. I've seen it once previously (because I wanted to see Alfie Boe). I like the film and I own the concert version on DVD. I just felt I needed to be there tonight and how glad I was.

From the moment the show began I cried and cried throughout. Actually I more than cried. I sobbed. And sobbed and sobbed. The staging is just awesome. The revolve so powerful. That baracade... It got entrance applause all on its own, which summed up the night. I was in the upper circle and the atmosphere was absolutely electric from start to finish. An incredible piece of theatre. Deans speech and the champagne was a lovely touch. He said about fifteen of this cast are going into the concert version.

I'm not one of the people who say change is bad. I have a visit to the Touring production booked in for August and am really looking forward to seeing how that production differs. But if you have created something THIS powerful. That looks so good. Why would you ever feel the need to change it?! To save a bit of money does not seem reason enough somehow.

I thought the cast was one of the weakest I've ever seen in 26 years of my (re)visiting the show. Very few had any stage presence and a lot of the voices of the leads (Valjean excluded) were weak. The cast are also hampered, though, by the cuts/changes that have bedevilled this piece over the years. I was struck last night by how ghastly the new orchestrations are, which sound tinny, weak, inappropriate at times and totally lack the symphonic majesty of John Cameron's originals. The crescendo when the barricade revolves to reveal Enjolras's body was laughably weak, and at one point the few remaining live musicians were out of time with a pre-recorded/Sinfonia bit that used to be played live. The cuts to the material don't help, but as they are decades old, I could have lived with that if everything else held up. But rushing through the score with a weak cast and awful orchestrations just left me cold. As a poster said previously, this production had already left the building in spirit. There was a lot of sloppy delivery of lines and certain blocking. I assume that, since the announcement (or even before), keeping the company in shape went out of the window.

Things got better in Act 2, and maybe the audience energy fed into the performance. Some major tears going on around me, one superfan sounded like she was struggling a lot during the final 10 minutes.

It's really sad to see the show go out on a whimper like this, with Cameron Mackintosh throwing the production that made his name under a bus to make a few bucks. Disappointed John Caird didn't take the stage to say something, but I can understand why he didn't. I didn't see him, but I heard John Napier was looking particularly unhappy. I assume the performance was filmed for Cameron to watch without having to cross paths with those he's unnecessarily caused rifts with. And it was greedy as hell to charge for brochures now that they're all obsolete!

I met a guy who had seen the show an insane number of times since the very first night at the Barbican in 1985. He won't be returning once the Queens reopens.

I feel a lot of critics/commentators have missed the point on this. No one is saying theatre shouldn't change; it's an ephemeral artform. But cutting the natural run of a show short to replace it with an inferior production that doesn't really have its own vision or identity and owes most of what is good about it to the original so that a multi-millionaire producer can cream some more off doesn't sit right. I don't think I'll be revising Miz until it is properly reimagined with a first-rate creative team of equal or more talent to the one behind this departed production.

Also sad that this planned restoration of the Queens will never happen:

I've bitten my tongue on the subject for a while, but this really is getting a bit hyperbolic now.

No show survives on its repeat custom or the mega fans. Yes, they contribute revenue and pass on their love of a show to others, but the recognisability and iconic nature of Les Mis as a brand is what keeps the show going, and that has nothing whatsoever to do with the revolve or the particular staging. It is the show as a whole.

9 out of 10 people who go to see the show probably don't even know what the revolve is. "The public" are just not that invested in that sort of detail in theatre. They might think it's a cool staging effect, but nothing more than that. The music and the story are what will be remembered and talked about most, the overall show, not the costumes, staging or effects alone. Not enough to make the difference between telling others to see the show or not. That much is obvious from the huge success of the concert versions that have happened in the past, and the advance sales for the one that is to come. Les Mis doesn't need the revolve to survive, it has the brand power to do so with any kind of staging or none.

So of course people are entitled to mourn the loss of the revolve if it impacts on their own person enjoyment of the show, and I think it's a huge shame that the record run is no more. But I think it's simply unrealistic to say that losing the revolve will lead the show to close, or cause a dip in popularity, or ruin the show from a commercial perspective, because I can't see anything to suggest that any of that is likely to be true. If anything, the opposite may well be more likely...

I suspect this is something Cameron will write about in years to come about how it was misjudged and a mistake to close the original production. I wonder what his thoughts were yesterday, with all the past cast and crew posting their emotional farewells to Les Mis on social media.

That said, the video of the UK tour that the official page has just posted on Facebook does look fantastic. I prefer the original production, but this change will blow some life back into the London show, which in my opinion had been run into the ground.

Sorry but I cannot agree with this. There is nothing cheap about the new production, it’s one of the most stunning things I’ve seen on stage and looks BETTER than the original and is better than many if not most West End musicals that I’ve seen. If people prefer the revolve and the nostalgia factor of the original then fine, but to say the new one is cheap is misrepresenting the facts.