musical review

Winter Musical review 

The play “Les Miserable” is written by famous writer Victor Hugo as one of the most historical tragic story in the history. The story starts with Jean Valjean, a slave who was caught stealing bread due to starvation, gets of prison after 19 years of torture and heavy lifting works. After a series of being humiliated and disrespected by others, Jean eventually understands the harshness of the society. Few years later Jean becomes a mayor. Everything is fine until Javert, the police chief who has talked to Jean when he was still in prison, recognizes him again. When Jean Valjean is escaping, he meets Fantine, a who has a 13 years old daughter named Cosette. Cosette eventually leaves with Jean Valjean. They have been through French revolution. On March 24th, I watched this play presented by CA varsity players in the black box. 

One of the major themes would be prejudice. Throughout the play, there is a group of people who are treated unequally wherever they go, poor people. When Jean Valjean is still a slave, he has a number that represents him, 24601. The symbolism of this number emphasizes how unimportant the slaves’ real names are to others. Police’s disrespect of identities to the slaves is seemed as a common thing in the society, which represents the chaos during that period of time. One of the phrases that really surprised me was when slaves were working, they sang ‘look down, look down, don't look them in the eye’. The sense of prejudice was also showed by the slaves since they know that they are treated unequally, but even worse, they know that they couldn't do anything to change this situation. 

One of the interesting factors that made this performance great and unique was the different strategies the director used to show the change in emotion of characters. For instance, during the bar scene where Thenardier and Mme Thenardier with other people were singing happily, the joyful emotion was showed by the use of lighting and music. The fast and happy rhythm and the use of blue, red and yellow lights represent the joyful atmosphere. However, when Mme Thenardier is forcing Cosette to go to dark well to get water, there were no fancy lights, and the background music was deep, which made me feel the heavy pressure Cosette has. 

The choice of costumes was also smart. Throughout the play, people at the higher status usually wear better clothes with either colorful decorations or just generally better quality clothes. This is showed in the first scene when Jean Valjean was wearing a white short with holes on it and Javert on the other hand was wearing a good, well-made coat with gold decorations on his hat. All these small details made this whole performance so perfect. 

Throughout the whole play, Jean Valjean, played by Lexi, was considered as the most important character in the story and she is my favorite actress of the performance, she had the most lines with lots of monologues, which was such a challenge. However, Lexi’s performance was very impressive. Her voice was nice and clear, her facial expression was always so kind and friendly, even to Javert who has been harsh on Jean Valjean. Javert, played by Jenna, has an opposite characteristic which is sincere, harsh. All these characteristics were shown by her deep voice. Lexi has such a beautiful voice that made this performance leveled up, she has such a great talent of singing that she can sing for nearly three hours without a single mistake.

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