On
the streets of Paris, revolution is in the air. The people want to take back
control from an out of touch government whose leaders are shoring up their own
wealth. Barricades look set to be leapt. Such is the way of history repeating
itself in France, from the 19th century uprising through to 1968 and
even the current, and slightly more ideologically ambiguous wave of street
protests by the so-called Gilets Jaunes. It was seeing photographs of the
latter in a French newspaper that struck a chord with Claude-Michel Schonberg.
“Those
pictures looked exactly like the set of Les Miserables,” says the composer of
one of the most iconic pieces of musical theatre in the late twentieth and
early twenty-first centuries. “First of all it made me realise that Les
Miserables is still relevant. Secondly, it also made me realise that in 200
years we have learnt nothing.”
Maybe
this is why the current year-long UK tour of Les Miserables, originally adapted
by Schonberg and writer Alan Boublil from Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel, has pretty
much sold out already. Arriving in
Edinburgh this month for the first time in twenty years for a month-long run,
the English-language version of Boublil and Schonberg’s show has been a fixture
of the London theatre circuit since Trevor Nunn directed a co-production
between the Royal Shakespeare Company and Cameron Mackintosh at the Barbican in
1985. This makes it the second longest-running musical in the world. Despite
the success of putting Hugo’s story charting ex-convict Jean Valjean’s travails
through poverty-stricken France onstage, Schonberg for one isn’t quite sure of
the reasons why it happened.
“It’s
a phenomenon I don’t really understand,” the now 74-year old composer admits of
a creation which introduced the world to songs now regarded as modern classics
such as I Dreamed A Dream, “but the show is more popular than ever. I must say,
I’m totally surprised.”
By the
time Les Miserables opens at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh, the new
six-part TV adaptation of Hugo’s book scripted by Andrew Davies will be mid-way
through its own run. With Dominic West playing Valjean as part of a cast that
includes Olivia Coleman and David Oyelowo, rather than claiming kin with
Boublil and Schonberg’s take on things, advance publicity appears to pointing
up the fact that it is categorically not the musical, and shouldn’t be confused
as such. With Les Mis the musical itself filmed in 2012 with Hugh Jackman as
Valjean, this too is something Schonberg doesn’t understand.
“Whenever
I read an article about the BBC version, they are saying it is the real version
of the novel and not the trivial musical
stage version,” he says. “I don’t know how you can promote something against
it. People know the title because of the musical show, but each time there’s an
adaptation, they all make the point that they are not going to have anyone
singing. But who knows? This one might be very good. I will look at it
carefully.”
Schonberg
probably doesn’t need to worry too much. As he points out, there has been more
than 50 films based on Hugo’s novel, with over twenty TV adaptations as well as
another twenty different versions onstage. This is how great stories work as
they are reimagined for every age. Indeed, it was another musical adaptation of
a nineteenth century novel that was the starting point for Les Miserables.
“Alain
saw Oliver! in London,” says Schonberg, who had previously collaborated with Boublil
on La Revolution Francaise, France’s first rock opera, produced in 1973. “I
said to Alain, next time we find a big subject, we have it as a sung-through
musical, and when Alain saw Oliver!, that gave us an idea about how to do it.”
Lionel
Bart’s musical version of Charles Dickens’ novel, Oliver Twist, had already
been adapted for film by Carol Reed in 1968 by then, after being first seen on
the West End eight years earlier. Prior to putting Les Miserables onstage, as
was the fashion then, Boublil and Schonberg released a recording of it as a
concept album. This approach had already paid dividends for the English musical
theatre team of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber with Jesus Christ Superstar
and Evita, and Schonberg had already scored hit records in France.
Three
years after the Les Miserables concept album had led to the show’s original
French production, it was heard by British producer Cameron Mackintosh after it
was passed on to him by director Peter Farago.
“Two
years after the show closed in Paris, Cameron was organising his records and
put it on,” Schonberg recalls. “and after that we heard he was looking for
those crazy French guys, Schonberg and Boublil”
While
the pair worked on new drafts of Les Miserables, Mackintosh was riding high on
the success of Cats, directed by Trevor Nunn, who had also overseen David
Edgar’s epic staging of Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby, and knew how to put on a
big show. Success was far from guaranteed, however, and the opening night of
Les Mis was a critical disaster.
“The
critics were very bad,’ says Schonberg, actually using the v word eight times.
“Cameron has a tradition of having a lunch the day after an opening night, and
it was like a funeral. We thought it was finished, and during the lunch Cameron
kept trying to call the box office to measure the scale of the disaster, but
couldn’t get through. Eventually he received a message to say that the reason
he couldn’t get through was that the show had sold 5,000 tickets, and in two
weeks would be sold out.”
Les
Miserables went on to win an Olivier Award for the most popular show, while on
Broadway it won three Tony awards.
The
current touring version is directed by Laurence Connor and James Powell for a
production reinvigorated for the show’s 25th anniversary in 2009.
The result is a very 21st century Les Mis, which utilises
projections based on paintings by Hugo created by son et lumiere auteurs
Fifty-Nine Productions. The internationally renowned team led by Leo Warner and
Mark Grimmer, who have come a long way since their early work at the Traverse Theatre, the National Theatre of
Scotland and with Stellar Quines Theatre Company.
Having
worked worldwide on the National Theatre’s production of War Horse and the 2012
Olympics, more recently 59 have been responsible for opening events of the
Edinburgh International Festival, Deep Time, Bloom and the First World
war-themed Five Telegrams. The latter projected
images onto the walls of the Usher Hall accompanied by a thundering score by
Anna Meredith.
“There
have been so many improvements to Les Miserable this year,’ says Schonberg.
“That has a lot to do with technological developments which wouldn’t have been
possible even five years ago.”
This
keeps the show fresh for several generations of theatre-goers, as was proven
last week, when Schonberg met a woman who told him how she’d seen Les
Miserables a staggering 300 times.
“For
Christmas she was taking her children and grand-children to see the show with
hr again,’ he says.”
What
Les Miserables taps into, again, Schonberg isn’t sure about. All he can say is
that “I think we did the right job, but it is the novel that is responsible for
the success of the show, and for whatever reason, people seem to leave the
theatre a bit different. People are scared for the future. They’re all looking
for a bright tomorrow and waiting for the sun to shine, and people come out of
the show perhaps believing they can be a better person.”
Les
Miserables, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, January 22-February 16.
The Herald, January 3rd 2019
ends
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