For an authorized biography, Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl does a good job of showing both the good and the not-so-good sides of its subject. Even had Dahl not become a bestselling, beloved children's author, his life would have been a fascinating one. Poor in Britain to Norwegian parents, he flew a fighter pilot in the early days of World War II, was a spy in Washington for the remainder, married a famous actress, and helped pioneer medical advances after tragedy struck his own family.
Author Donald Sturrock doesn't hesitate to show the darker Dahl--misanthropic, touchy, hard to work with, grudge-holding, outspoken, prone to picking fights. There were a LOT of times when I felt that Dahl wasn't someone I'd want to know. Sturrock doesn't delve too much into the books and stories themselves, but provides enough information that in reading Dahl's work after this biography, I feel I have new insight into his books.
(Some of that, of course, might be because I'm reading them as a 30-something, not a 10-year-old.)
And it is impressive reading Dahl's stories. The style is just phenomenal. The books read as though he's talking to you. The books are clearly meant for children, and that's the voice of them, but in no way are they condescending. His language, his rhythm, his cadence...it's just so impressive.
Also, dude was a hottie. Seriously, it's no wonder he was seducing women all over the place during WWII. And I NEED to visit his house the next time I'm in England.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
I do hear the people. They are, in fact, singing.
To commemorate the 25th anniversary of Les Miserables, Laurence Connor and James Powell restaged the show, and it's this production that's currently on tour. (Amusingly enough, both the new and original productions were playing the West End at the same time. I admit that it'd be kind of cool to see one at a matinee and the other in the evening. I'm not sure if one has closed at this point.) It was this production that I saw Tuesday night.
In case anybody doesn't want to know the details of the new production, I'll keep discussion of that to the end of the entry, and let you know when I'll start on it. However, I pretty much assume everyone knows the story itself. (People die?)
Lawrence Clayton's Valjean didn't blow me away. At all. I don't know if it was an off night, or he's getting the plague that has struck pretty much everyone this winter, or what, but his voice just seemed very weak.
My only other criticism of the cast was would be Chasten Harmon's Eponine. Don't get me wrong--she has a GREAT voice. But hers is a mature voice, and if there's one thing Eponine isn't, it's mature. She just sounded too adult to be this girl suffering through unrequited love. It's not that 30-year-olds DON'T deal with unrequited feelings, it's just that it's expressed completely differently. "On My Own" is the best song EVER...if you're 16. At 32, it makes me cringe. Plus, a lot of the time, it didn't seem like Harmon was that into the role; it was like she was going through the motions, not feeling anything. Sad. Felicia Curry, you remain the best Eponine!
I'm not sure whether I can say anything about Jeremy Hays's performance Enjolras. Here's the thing--his hair is CRAZY. I spent a LOT of time being very distracted by it. I'm sure he sang as well, but HAIR. I do have to give kudos to Joseph Spieldenner's Grantaire--young! cute!--and Justin Scott Brown's Marius. Sounded good, acted well. No Michael Ball, of course.
OK, the new production.
The quotes I've read from the creative team talk about how it's completely different--new orchestration, new direction, new costumes. Well...some new costumes. Javert, Enjolras, Valjean, Fantine...all in the same outfits you're used to seeing. And some new staging. But some old staging. At times it seemed like a totally new production; sometimes it seemed like the same production, with a different backdrop (Fantine enters from stage left, not stage right! Totally new!).
Speaking of, I LOVE the backdrops. I had never noticed, but the old production really didn't have any backgrounds. The designer used some of Victor Hugo's own paintings to make the backdrops and it works fabulously.
However, I don't know about the beginning. Instead of a quarry, the show starts on a prison ship. Official descriptions describe Valjean as a "slave" on the ship. The issue here is that Lawrence Clayton is black. And Javert wandered around carrying chains. The whole thing made me a bit uncomfortable.
Very well done at the beginning was "Les Miserables" being shown on the scrim just after the prologue, as Valjean tears up his ticket of leave. It really shows that that is a prologue; now the real story can begin. I literally got chills.
The whole show was a rougher production than the old. Not rough in the sense of unpolished; rough in the sense of being more violent and sexual than I'm used to. Valjean was looking for a fight before he meets the Bishop of Digne. The students attacked Grantaire during his verse of "Drink With Me." There's a prostitute giving a guy oral during "Lovely Ladies" and a couple having sex--in a few positions, no less--during "Master of the House." I felt for the mother of the two teens sitting next to me.
The show works quite well without the revolving stage. There are more large set pieces that are used to great effect. The only time I really felt the absence of the revolve was during the barricade scenes. That's the one area that I'm really conflicted on; I still don't know how well it works.
Because you can only see one side of the barricade, you only hear Gavroche's death. In some ways, this works; it's how most of the men on the barricade experienced it, and it allows the audience to immediately see their reactions (Grantaire! Love!). However, it loses some of its impact. Similarly, the deaths are done a bit differently; each student gets what I call the "death light"--that bright, pure white light used when someone dies. However, there's so much smoke that it's hard to tell who was who. Enjolras didn't grab the red flag over his head...but he was waving it, which made me wonder whether the flag was just stuck. I kind of hope so. He died, and then, instead of seeing Grantaire run up as I was used to (maybe he did? Like I said, lots of smoke), each student dies in his or her turn. (With some help from explosions, and kudos to those, because it worked very well.)
(It just hit me that this is kind of ironic, that Enjolras and Grantaire are generally the first two to die; in the book, they're literally the last two.)
The lack of a revolve, though, means that things need to move faster. In that instrumental after everyone dies, you get to spend some time seeing the students laying there, the barricade turns, and then there's Enjolras draped over his flag and Gavroche on the ground. This gives time for the barricade to clear and move on. Without the revolve, though, it felt a bit rushed, getting Valjean and Marius into the sewer, the barricade set going off stage, and then Javert running across a cart with Enjolras and Gavroche.
Admittedly, that was kind of a great moment, mostly because of how awesome Andrew Varela's Javert is. I was quite literally in the last row of the theater, but his pause as he stared at Enjolras and Gavroche conveyed everything it needed to. Even so, it lacked the emotional impact of seeing them on the barricade. So I don't know.
I also enjoyed the tweaked "Empty Chairs" and I really appreciated them changing one of the lines on the barricades. Instead of "Everybody stay awake, we must be ready for the fight, for the final fight. Let no one sleep tonight" followed immediately by "Marius, rest"--which has bothered me for YEARS--they changed it. YAY! I don't remember the new lyrics, but I was just glad to hear them.
It's still Les Mis and I still found myself with tears streaming down my cheeks at the end of the show. There's a lot to discuss here--obviously, brevity is NOT my strong point on this topic--but the soul of the show remains firmly in place.
In case anybody doesn't want to know the details of the new production, I'll keep discussion of that to the end of the entry, and let you know when I'll start on it. However, I pretty much assume everyone knows the story itself. (People die?)
Lawrence Clayton's Valjean didn't blow me away. At all. I don't know if it was an off night, or he's getting the plague that has struck pretty much everyone this winter, or what, but his voice just seemed very weak.
My only other criticism of the cast was would be Chasten Harmon's Eponine. Don't get me wrong--she has a GREAT voice. But hers is a mature voice, and if there's one thing Eponine isn't, it's mature. She just sounded too adult to be this girl suffering through unrequited love. It's not that 30-year-olds DON'T deal with unrequited feelings, it's just that it's expressed completely differently. "On My Own" is the best song EVER...if you're 16. At 32, it makes me cringe. Plus, a lot of the time, it didn't seem like Harmon was that into the role; it was like she was going through the motions, not feeling anything. Sad. Felicia Curry, you remain the best Eponine!
I'm not sure whether I can say anything about Jeremy Hays's performance Enjolras. Here's the thing--his hair is CRAZY. I spent a LOT of time being very distracted by it. I'm sure he sang as well, but HAIR. I do have to give kudos to Joseph Spieldenner's Grantaire--young! cute!--and Justin Scott Brown's Marius. Sounded good, acted well. No Michael Ball, of course.
OK, the new production.
The quotes I've read from the creative team talk about how it's completely different--new orchestration, new direction, new costumes. Well...some new costumes. Javert, Enjolras, Valjean, Fantine...all in the same outfits you're used to seeing. And some new staging. But some old staging. At times it seemed like a totally new production; sometimes it seemed like the same production, with a different backdrop (Fantine enters from stage left, not stage right! Totally new!).
Speaking of, I LOVE the backdrops. I had never noticed, but the old production really didn't have any backgrounds. The designer used some of Victor Hugo's own paintings to make the backdrops and it works fabulously.
However, I don't know about the beginning. Instead of a quarry, the show starts on a prison ship. Official descriptions describe Valjean as a "slave" on the ship. The issue here is that Lawrence Clayton is black. And Javert wandered around carrying chains. The whole thing made me a bit uncomfortable.
Very well done at the beginning was "Les Miserables" being shown on the scrim just after the prologue, as Valjean tears up his ticket of leave. It really shows that that is a prologue; now the real story can begin. I literally got chills.
The whole show was a rougher production than the old. Not rough in the sense of unpolished; rough in the sense of being more violent and sexual than I'm used to. Valjean was looking for a fight before he meets the Bishop of Digne. The students attacked Grantaire during his verse of "Drink With Me." There's a prostitute giving a guy oral during "Lovely Ladies" and a couple having sex--in a few positions, no less--during "Master of the House." I felt for the mother of the two teens sitting next to me.
The show works quite well without the revolving stage. There are more large set pieces that are used to great effect. The only time I really felt the absence of the revolve was during the barricade scenes. That's the one area that I'm really conflicted on; I still don't know how well it works.
Because you can only see one side of the barricade, you only hear Gavroche's death. In some ways, this works; it's how most of the men on the barricade experienced it, and it allows the audience to immediately see their reactions (Grantaire! Love!). However, it loses some of its impact. Similarly, the deaths are done a bit differently; each student gets what I call the "death light"--that bright, pure white light used when someone dies. However, there's so much smoke that it's hard to tell who was who. Enjolras didn't grab the red flag over his head...but he was waving it, which made me wonder whether the flag was just stuck. I kind of hope so. He died, and then, instead of seeing Grantaire run up as I was used to (maybe he did? Like I said, lots of smoke), each student dies in his or her turn. (With some help from explosions, and kudos to those, because it worked very well.)
(It just hit me that this is kind of ironic, that Enjolras and Grantaire are generally the first two to die; in the book, they're literally the last two.)
The lack of a revolve, though, means that things need to move faster. In that instrumental after everyone dies, you get to spend some time seeing the students laying there, the barricade turns, and then there's Enjolras draped over his flag and Gavroche on the ground. This gives time for the barricade to clear and move on. Without the revolve, though, it felt a bit rushed, getting Valjean and Marius into the sewer, the barricade set going off stage, and then Javert running across a cart with Enjolras and Gavroche.
Admittedly, that was kind of a great moment, mostly because of how awesome Andrew Varela's Javert is. I was quite literally in the last row of the theater, but his pause as he stared at Enjolras and Gavroche conveyed everything it needed to. Even so, it lacked the emotional impact of seeing them on the barricade. So I don't know.
I also enjoyed the tweaked "Empty Chairs" and I really appreciated them changing one of the lines on the barricades. Instead of "Everybody stay awake, we must be ready for the fight, for the final fight. Let no one sleep tonight" followed immediately by "Marius, rest"--which has bothered me for YEARS--they changed it. YAY! I don't remember the new lyrics, but I was just glad to hear them.
It's still Les Mis and I still found myself with tears streaming down my cheeks at the end of the show. There's a lot to discuss here--obviously, brevity is NOT my strong point on this topic--but the soul of the show remains firmly in place.
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