Les Miserables Sarasota reviews
I am a life-long fan of this show, having seen it on Broadway multiple times (the original and the revival). In this performance, the talent overall was wonderful. I was especially impressed with Javert and Eponine. They were spot on. Javert sounded equally as talented as any Javert I've heard on Broadway. This Eponine was the best I've ever seen with the exception of Lea Salonga. However, this Fantine was quite weak. In my opinion her voice sounded exhausted; I attended the very last performance in my area. Her voice was not an acceptable quality for a song like I Dreamed A Dream. Gavroche was also impressive. He was talented, especially acting wise! He pulled off a kid-death-sequence that had the woman next to me in tears (I wasn't exactly dry-eyed either to be honest). And it's always refreshing when theater actually makes a go at diversity. I'm tired of always seeing my favorite characters portrayed by white folks. Gavroche is definitely one of those characters, and it was fantastic to not have to deal with that for once. Jean Valjean was good, not breath-taking, but good. A breath-taking Jean Valjean would've been nice, but those are rare.
I would like to point out that I did not pay to watch people knitting air, or reloading their rifles with.... absolutely nothing. Les Mis is a show where you NEED REAL PROPS. In this performance, some props were real, and some were imaginary. That doesn't fly. It was distracting and it truly did detract from the show. Yes, I have been in shows where we did the same thing, but not shows that were supposed to be of this kind of quality. I'm sure this company can afford to buy all the props they need for a show, not just some props, before people pay to watch it.
4 stars for an overall great show