"Les Misérables" at Palikū Theatre: Sept. 20, 2013

Hey, all!

It's been quite a while since my last update, as life's been getting rather crazily busy, but I won't get into that quite yet. Instead, I'll be blogging on something I've meant to do for nearly a month now: I got to see a truly fantastic production of the musical Les Misérables at Palikū Theatre, which is quite close to where I live. This past May, I also got to see the national tour of the show with a few friends. This marks the second time I saw a Palikū production of a show shortly after seeing a national one, the previous time being when I saw The Phantom of the Opera in Las Vegas in 2011, and then saw it at Palikū later that year. You can check out the reviews I posted on my companion blog -- Vegas parts 1, 2, and 3, and Palikū 1 and 2. The Palikū reviews were quite an interesting thing for me in that the cast and crew members discovered my first review online and mentioned it to me when I went to see the show a second time; definitely wasn't expecting that. And a few of the people who worked on their production of Les Misérables still remembered me, as well!

Anyway, this post actually goes way, way back to June when I auditioned for the company. The audition process was really interesting, as it was set up more like a concert or gala than a typical audition. Everyone trying for a part got up on the stage of the theatre and sang before a full crowd -- the director and other higher-ups were in the front row, and the rest of the auditionees (along with their families and friends who were there for moral support) filled out the rest of the auditorium. I guess the showrunners wanted to be sure that everyone could handle the pressure of singing before a packed house. There was an impressive variety of people trying out and of songs being sung -- one girl trying for Cosette sang "I Saw Him Once," which was featured in the original London production of Les Misérables and hasn't been used in any production since. I didn't know the sheet music for that song was available anywhere! In any case, I sang "The Longer I Live" from Frank Wildhorn's Dracula: The Musical. Although I didn't get into the show, it was still a fantastic experience. The theatre staff were all incredibly well-prepared and supportive, and I'd gladly audition for one of their productions again in the future. Plus, hearing all the other superb performers singing gave me a lot of confidence that this production would be a fantastic one.

A couple months later, I saw a newspaper article talking about the two productions of Les Misérables going on in Hawai'i this year. Yes, two -- the other one happened on Maui about a month before Palikū's. The article was mostly about the Maui production, but it also revealed a bit of casting info from Palikū. What really excited me was that the article said Kip Wilborn would be playing Jean Valjean. I remembered Kip as Raoul and a fantastic understudy Phantom in Toronto's production of The Phantom of the Opera, and so I was really eager to see him as Valjean. The article also mentioned that Cliffton Hall would be playing Marius, a role he had previously played on Broadway and in the US Tour. I had seen him the previous December as Fiyero in the Wicked tour that came to Hawai'i, so I was confident that he'd be great as well. And after looking up Buz Tennent (who had been cast as Javert) on YouTube and stumbling upon a video of him singing "Some Enchanted Evening" at a charity event, I was really hyped for this cast. I bought a ticket for opening night, September 20th, and started counting down the days.

Well, now that I've seen the production, what did I think? Well, to start with, I got tickets to see it again on Wednesday, October 23rd! But yes, the production was superb. Kip Wilborn was a fantastic Valjean, and being in the front row made his portrayal come across incredibly well for me. Buz Tennent was a powerful Javert who might have seemed overly rigid, but his humanity came through at all the right moments; he didn't seem like a cartoon villain like some Javert portrayals I've seen, but was instead believable as a man following the path he thought was right. If the story were told differently, Javert could have been the tragic hero of Les Misérables, and that definitely came through in Tennent's portrayal. He flubbed one line, but it still worked pretty well. Jana Alcain was an incredible Fantine who delivered the perfect mix of strength and pathos. Cliffton Hall was a great Marius, although he occasionally came in a bit early in his first couple of scenes, and I believed that his character matured over the course of the show. Shawna Masuda was a superb Éponine (reprising the role from when she was in Diamond Head Theatre's production back in 2008), and Kim Anderson was a great Cosette (although she pulled very sharp at the end of "Every Day"; she was excellent otherwise). Scott and Zenia Moura, who are married in real life, played the Thénardiers and gave them an excellent mix of villainy and humor. I had seen Scott previously as Pirelli in Army Theatre's Sweeney Todd back in 2006. Michael Bright as Enjolras intrigued me since he looked and acted quite a bit like Ramin Karimloo in the role (though thankfully without the somewhat out-of-character moments Ramin displayed in the 25th anniversary concert of the show), but vocally was closer to Aaron Lazar from the 2006 Broadway revival cast. The ensemble was superb, particularly the 'Lovely Ladies' and the barricade boys -- aside from Gavroche forgetting his line at the start of "Look Down" (oddly, the same thing that happened at his audition), they were all spot-on. Though I did get a little confused since the actors playing Grantaire and Feuilly looked a bit similar; during "Do You Hear the People Sing?", I was wondering why Grantaire was singing Feuilly's lines in the song, but later realized that was Feuilly all along. (Eventually, I figured out that Grantaire had sideburns while Feuilly didn't.)

The direction and blocking hit a neat balance between the original and 25th anniversary stagings of the show. The set pieces were the same in most scenes but were rotated to portray different locations in the story. There were also some neat decisions made in terms of musical direction, including sudden crescendos during key notes from the ensemble in "At the End of the Day." I really appreciated that the orchestra took its time here; much as I loved the US Tour back in May and as wonderful as the cast was, it often felt like the conductor was in a big hurry to be done with the show as quickly as possible and didn't give the performers much time to act their lines. Here, though, the orchestra took all the time it needed, and yet the performance never seemed to drag. Some bits in the score were vamped to allow more time for scene changes, but even those seemed to work to the show's advantage.

I'll go into much more detail about this production when I see it again next week (and thus, I'll do my best not to put off posting for quite as long)... but in any case, it was a magnificent production and I'm very glad I'll get to go one more time! Tickets sold out incredibly fast; all the originally scheduled performances were sold out before opening night, and the additional dates that were added also went very quickly. I'm really looking forward to seeing this production again; it's not every year that I get to see multiple awesome productions of a show in the same year, after all!

~ Toru771