Word: valjeans
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Based on the novel by Victor Hugo, the show tells the story of Jean Valjean (William Solo, who understudied the role on Broadway). Paroled in 1815, Valjean realizes he must break parole if he is to have any success in the outside world...
After 8 years, Valjean has changed his name and become the mayor of Montreuil-Sur-Mer, and he finds himself involved with the case of Fantine (Diane Fratantoni), a woman who finds she must work as a prostitute to pay for the care of her small daughter...
...then, has Biden become a modern-day Jean Valjean, condemned to suffer permanently for the political equivalent of stealing a loaf of bread? Biden is more than a hapless victim, since his Gatling-gun rhetoric certainly compounded the problem. Still, the Biden brouhaha illustrates the six deadly requirements for a crippling political scandal...
...plot sprawls across 17 years, most of them so telescoped that to believe the tale spectators must make leaps of faith. Valjean first appears in chains; released after 19 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread to save his sister's starving child, he remains unrepentant. Given shelter by a bishop, the hardened Valjean robs him, only to be recaptured by police; when the clergyman backs up his false claim that the booty was a gift, Valjean undergoes a moral transformation. He also undergoes a legal one: he destroys his papers, takes a new name and eventually becomes...
Just as the moral center of Hugo's Les Miserables is Valjean, so the driving force of the stage show is Colm Wilkinson. An Irish singer largely untrained as an actor until he originated the role in London, Wilkinson, 43, has a superb pop-rock voice, whether in the assertive Who Am I or the wistful Bring Him Home. Unexpectedly, he encompasses the outsize moral stature of Valjean, making believable both his general saintliness and his outbursts of animal ferocity. Only one other member of the original cast is in the U.S. company: Frances Ruffelle, who as a tomboyish adolescent...