Les Miserables
Les Miserables an international award winning musical has been going for a record 25 years and is still going strong today. It sweeps its audience through a tale of passion, the gripping political revolution of 19th century France, and music that is so unforgettable that you come out of the theatre wanting more.
Les Miserable was first opened in the prestigious Palace Theatre Shaftsbury Avenue in 1980, and moved to The Queen’s Theatre enthralling audiences today as it did then. Les Miserables fondly known as Les Miz is one of these musicals that you want to see over and over again because the love song’s pulls at your heart strings and the revolutionary overture gets your blood pumping and foot tapping with the production.
This remarkable production adapted from the classic novel by Victor Hugo is a tale that you will never forget. Pursued relentlessly by a policeman ‘’Javert’’ who only knows Jean Valjean as prisoner 24601 wants only to see him behind bars for breaking his parole. The chain gang sang by Valjean and Javert moves you to the core.
The story follows Valjean over a decade of political revolutionary France being befriended by Bishop Digne who gives him his first break and the opportunity to turn his life around.
That is exactly what he does and we see him working hard to become the owner of a factory and mayor. Intending on helping others he agrees to raise the daughter ‘’Cosette’’, of a dying prostitute, ’’Fantine’’, who is being cared for by the Thenardiers, a crooked couple intent on exploiting anyone who comes in contact with them. Here we meet little Cosette singing a moving solo of Castle on a cloud. If you have a dry eye you are not human.
Valjean and Cosette flee to Paris and after an uneventful few years, Cosette now a young lady falls in love with student Marius, involved with the revolution. Making Cosette happy and keeping her safe is paramount to Valjean and with this in mind he gets involved with the revolution party and there finds himself having to safe his arch enemy ‘’Javert’’ from the hands of the student who discover that he is a spy. Javert not being able to cope with his conflicting feelings of justice and feeling beholding to Valjean for showing him mercy, kills himself.
A Cameron Mackintosh production of an epic proportion in the musical world with lyrics by Herbert Krazmer and music by Cloude-Michel Schoenberg has been seen by more then 55 million people worldwide, in 40 countries with translation in 21 languages. This has been one of the most spectacular adaptive masterpiece which continues to thrill audiences, day in day out with a list of scores having artist wanting to perform the version, such as, Neil Diamond, Aretha Franklin, David Essex, Michael Crawford, most recently Susan Boyle an amateur singer stole the show with a jaw dropping performance of ‘’I dreamed a dream’’ for Britain’s got Talent television programme There are so many unforgettable songs that this musical will never die.
Kelly,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your piece of writing on Les miserables and although I have seen the show, I feel like I want to go back to see it again. The structure is very strong and easy to follow. The content tells me all I need to know about the show and story line.
It seems as though you have aimed this piece to be your descriptive style. This is evident from your descriptive sentence “and the revolutionary overture gets your blood pumping and foot tapping with the production” and your clever use of metaphor “the love songs pull at your hearts strings”
However I do sense a marketing feel to the piece too and at times it does sound like you are trying to sell the show. I found when writing my marketing piece that there can be a very fine line between the two styles of marketing and descriptive.
I feel that if you have aimed this to be your descriptive piece, you should show the reader what happens in the story of Les mis, rather than tell them about it. Maybe you could imagine you are a human video camera and you have just watched and recorded the show. From the recordings you have some still images that you can describe to the reader. eg, “A thick sooty black mist covered the stage. As I looked up a tall dark figure emerged from it. I gasped with excitement as shivers ran down my spine”. You could think about using more metaphors and some similes. “the figure was as black as coal”
I hope this is useful to you Kelly and look forward to reading more from you
Michelle
Thanxs Michelle for your comment this is really going to help me beacuse i havent been well at all i found this module really hard but i am slowly getting there so thanx you i am going to think about everything you have said and will try to follow your advice. Hope you had a good xmas and new year.xx
ReplyDeleteHi, hope you're better now,I know it's late but thought I'd drop in a comment anyway.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a really strong piece, I like your starting paragraph as it draws the reader's attention to the success of the show then in the second paragraph you go on to the history. From the amount of description I see this as your descriptive piece. Though being descriptive it is very informative as well and seems to be a well researcehd piece.
The short paragraph in the middle "The story follows Valjean over a decade of political revolutionary France being befriended by Bishop Digne who ....." could may be tied in somewhere else. as it ends quite quickly with no other points being made or is it supposed to link on to the next paragraph?
A very interesting piece and actually a musical i have yet to see (a sin i know - being a musical theatre student!!) but after reading this i'd quite like to see it !
Kelly
ReplyDeleteIf you made Lucy want to see the show with your description, I think that might be an indication that you got your audience thinking about what you wrote about.
Paula