A couple of
months ago, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival announced that
it was canceling its summer production of Les Misérables.
Despite the musical's enduring popularity, spending $1.3
million to stage the sweeping show about impoverished people
in 19th century France became prohibitive in this tanking
economy.
But at Actors'
Playhouse, the award-winning Coral Gables theater known
for making the most of its financial and donated resources,
the show goes on.
Beginning a
month-long run with its gala opening this weekend, the 1985
Claude-Michel Schonberg-Alain Boublil musical is a proven
entertainment commodity. It has been seen by more than 55
million people, staged in 38 countries, translated into
21 languages. Through time and many cultures, the musical
based on Victor Hugo's 1862 epic novel still resonates.
Barbara Stein,
executive director at Actors' Playhouse, grabbed the regional
rights to Les Misérables -- aka Les Miz -- as soon
as they became available. Then she had to figure out how
to pay for a show that features 26 adult actors and a half-dozen
kids alternating in the roles of young Cosette, young Eponine
and Gavroche.
''We'll spend
approximately $350,000 in cash, plus another $300,000 worth
of in-kind donations like housing and rental cars for this
show,'' Stein says. "A theater like this can make a
high-end production look like $1 million. . . . Some theaters
have canceled [Les Miz] because of the economy, but we want
to maintain the trust people have in us.''
David Arisco,
the theater's artistic director, is the guy in charge of
staging Les Miz, and he knows as well as anyone just what
a huge undertaking it is. But he, too, was all for going
ahead with it.
''This is who
we are. It will be our signature show of the season. People
are afraid of spending money now, but we're unusual. We
can do a big musical more affordably because we're able
to hire both Equity and non-Equity talent. And our creative
team is here,'' Arisco says.
"We're
not trying to reinvent the wheel. We're trying to do a great
Les Miz.''
MAKING
DO
One key difference
in the Actors' Playhouse production will be the show's signature
turntable: There isn't one. A turntable allows for fast
scene changes, a sense of constant motion and a cinematic
sweep. But using it would require the approval of representatives
of London/Broadway producer Cameron Mackintosh and original
director Trevor Nunn. So Arisco and set designer Sean McClelland
came up with different ideas.
In casting,
Arisco found several performers who had done Les Miz on
Broadway or on a national tour, people whose experience
and depth of knowledge about the musical enriched the three-week
rehearsal process.
David Michael
Felty played the lead role of Jean Valjean, the bitter ex-convict
who becomes a self-sacrificing hero, on the national tour.
Trent Blanton portrayed Valjean's relentless pursuer Javert
on the same tour. The two became friends, and their connection
paid off from the first day of rehearsal.
''Trent and
David started singing, and it was instant Les Miz,'' says
Gwen Hollander, who plays the grown-up Eponine and who used
to sell souvenir programs when Les Misérables was
on Broadway. "We know the show is anchored by awesome
people.''
''We got goose
bumps,'' adds Christopher Hudson Myers, who stars as the
rebellious Marius, the man loved by both Cosette and Eponine.
"I have complete faith in the show. It's on a pedestal,
and that's another added pressure. We know people will come
in with expectations, whether they're seeing it for the
first time or the 20th.'' Felty, who has sung the Valjean
role more than 300 times, calls it tiring but not difficult.
''People don't
realize how rangy it is,'' says Felty, who lives in Pennsylvania.
"It's in the cellar, then the stratosphere. I'm more
a tenor.''
Felty adds
that the show is ". . . an excuse to let go of your
emotions for three hours. . . . When I've watched it [from
the audience], I bawled at intermission almost every time.''
Blanton, who
is working on his master's degree at Florida Atlantic University,
says doing Les Miz again with Felty is ``like slipping on
a glove. It's lots of fun. We've been friends for years,
and we have chemistry.''
Like a number
of his cast mates, Blanton fell in love with Les Miz years
ago.
''I was in
high school in Atlanta in 1990, and I went to the Fox Theatre
and saw the national tour that I would join 10 years later,''
Blanton says. 'That was the first time I saw something and
thought, `I have to be in that show.' I'd never seen theater
be so cinematic and so powerful.''
CHANGING
ROLES
Orlando-based
actress Melissa Minyard played the adult Cosette on Broadway
and on tour, and now she's stepping into the role of Cosette's
mother, the tragic Fantine. She says Les Miz is her favorite
show, and she's certain the Actors' Playhouse cast can ``.
. . live up to what it offers. . . . When I first heard
everyone singing together, it was just as good as the Broadway
or touring casts.''
Arisco's stepson,
Sean Russell, is in the show playing a student and several
other roles. He, too, has a history with Les Miz: When he
was 12, he went to a huge casting call at Miami Beach's
Jackie Gleason Theater, and he wound up playing the brash
kid Gavroche on Broadway for more than five months in 1994.
Like everyone who had appeared in the show in New York,
he was invited back for the show's final performance in
2003 -- ''it was more like a rock concert,'' he says --
and his experience came flooding back on his first day of
rehearsals for the Actors' production.
''It's interesting
being an adult in the show and looking back at playing Gavroche,''
Russell says. "On that first day, I remembered all
of my blocking.''
Russell, who
describes Les Miz as ''a special, beautiful musical,'' notes
the current relevance of its story of struggle. But its
enduring theme, he believes, comes from something Valjean
sings.
'The
show offers joy and escapism, but its lasting message
is Valjean's: `To love another person is to see
the face of God.' ''
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