Word: valjeans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Police inspector Javert suspects the mayor, Jean Valjean, is really a thief who broke parole many years before...
Although the sheer emotional force of the play makes criticism difficult, some gaping flaws are still evident. The greatest mistake in the entire show is the casting of Jean Valjean himself. Except in the stellar "Bring Him House", Stone cannot muster the vocal richness the part calls for. Most of the time his coarse, grainy singing voice makes one flinch. Considering the role is one of the most coveted of all time in musical theater, how such poor casting could have occurred is difficult to understand. Another disappointment is found in Sheperd, who plays Thenardier's female partner in crime...
...fully appreciate "Les Mis," one must be fairly familiar with the plot, which revolves around Jean Valjean (Gregory Calvin Stone), convict number 24601 in 19th-century France. After serving 19 years in jail for stealing bread for his starving family, he cannot find work, friends, or a place to sleep, until a kindly bishop (Michael Marra) takes him in, and publicly forgives him when Valjean steals his silver. Valjean is so moved that he decides to change his life around. Eight years later he is mayor and the owner of a factory, where a girl named Fantine (Lisa Capps...
Although police inspector Javert (Todd Alan Johnson) is hot on his trail, Valjean stays with the dying Fantine in the hospital and decides to adopt her child as his own, rescuing the young Cosette (Danielle Raniere) from the clutches of the evil, greedy Thenardiers (J.P. Dougherty and Tregoeny Sheperd). Ten years later in Paris, a grown Cosette (Kate Fisher) falls in love with the student Marius (Rich Affannato), whom the Thenardiers' daughter eponine (Rona Figueroa) also secretly loves. Meanwhile, all Paris is one the brink of revolution, which breaks out with appropriate passion in Act II, bringing all the characters...
What Lelouch does instead is divide Valjean in two, a father and son (both played by a wonderfully battered Jean-Paul Belmondo, whose son Paul plays the character in a transitional passage). Then he provides him with adventures that analogize, rather than slavishly imitate, those of his literary model. This figure, called Henri Fortin, is throughout aware of his resemblance to Hugo's original. He sees movie versions of the story, and people keep telling him that his physical strength, moral fortitude and frequent bad luck remind them of Valjean. He wouldn't know. He's illiterate, a retired boxing...