les miserables - c'est magnifique! (Les Miserables)

Name: beowulf

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Product:	Les Miserables
Date:	01/09/01 (170 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The best musical ever

Disadvantages: pricey

Goosepimples - that's what its all about. That feeling you get when your third division team beats premier league opponents, when the band you've loved for years get to number one, when the boy/girl you've been chasing for ages finally agrees to a long-awaited date. This musical provides magical moments in spades and is guaranteed to get the hairs fully erect on the back of your neck.

I'm not a culture vulture by any means, but this musical gets the lump in the throat throbbing in the same way as Schindler's List, The Shawshank Redemption or King Lear. It is a masterpiece that shouldn't be missed by anyone.

To try and condense a 3.5 hour musical in a few sentences would be futile but I'll try and give you an idea of what its all about.

Our hero, Jean Valjean is presented at the start of the piece as a 'criminal' who took a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving child. He receives a 5 year sentence of hard labour for the theft and another 14 years for trying to escape from the 'chain gang'. Valjean serves his sentence and is issued with his probation order after 19 years by the chief of police Javert. Valjean desperately searches for work, but cannot get a decent day's pay as a result of his parole and decides to do a runner.

The rest of the story reads like a Hollywood Blockbster or a Jilly Cooper Novel. To reveal it all would require another 5000 words and a degree in English Language and it would spoil it for you all.

Suffice to say this musical has it all. There are plenty of confrontaions between Valjean and Javert, unrequited love, true love, war, death and recriminations, but also comedy and deliveration. It is both heartbreaking and life-affirming at the same time.

Great tunes, fantastic lyrics and a great set. Les Mis is the Biz.

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