Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent - Victor Hugo
Amrita Frederick and Augustine Paul’s adaptation of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s Les Misérables based on Hugo’s novel by the same name was a brilliant cocktail of light, sound, colour, drama and above all, music that is as timeless as the people whose stories emerge out of the notes.
Set in France in the early 1800s, it follows the life of ex-convict Jean Valjean (Yohan Chacko), who has just been released by policeman Javert (Sandeep John) from the Bagne of Toulon, where he has spent nearly 20 years of his life for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s hungry children. Bitter and broken, Prisoner 24601 (as he is referred to by Javert, his nemesis), is offered a new lease of life by the Bishop of Digne who offers him shelter and teaches him a lesson in love and forgiveness. Emboldened by the gesture, Jean decides to disappear and start all over again.
He eventually becomes a wealthy factory owner and the mayor of a town. A chance encounter with Fantine (Pallavi Venkatarangam), a former factory worker who gets pushed into a life of prostitution and blames Jean for it, sees him having to confront Javert again. When Fantine, who is unwell, dies he promises to look after her illegitimate daughter, little Cosette (Antara), who is currently in the keep of an unscrupulous inn-keeper couple, the Thénardiers (Felix Daly and Deepa Nambiar). After overpowering and escaping from Javert, Jean manages to rescue Cosette and brings her up as his own.
Nine years pass by. Poverty is rife is France and Paris is in the midst of a terrible upheaval — a group of students lead by the charismatic Enjolras (Prince “Sunny” Abraham) are planning an uprising. Jean and a now grown-up Cosette (Nadisha Thomas) get into the thick of it. Also there is Javert, whose constant unyielding need for justice has not dimmed over the years.
Yohan Chacko’s Jean Valjean evolves brilliantly over the course of the play — from the embittered convict to the suave man of the world, to the guilt-wracked, tormented creature who opens his heart up to love and light, to the father driven by nothing more than his daughter’s safety and happiness. Sangita Santosham is the prefect Eponine — the slightly awkward, somewhat neglected daughter of the Thénardiers whose love for Marius (Johnson JW), though unrequited, manages to generate acts of supreme courage and sacrifice.
Pallavi’s Fantine isn’t bad except for an occasional lapse into histrionics. Her rendition of I Dreamed a Dream missed the mark a little, at least for me. It sounded more like the disappointed ditty of a woman who has lost her job than the desperate lament of one who has lost her soul, her ideals, her love, her very self. In fact, the scene where Fantine gets inducted into prostitution is slightly less impactful than it should be — the gaiety isn’t forced enough and the squalor beneath barely apparent.
Cosette and Marius are sweet enough and both Nadisha and Johnson are good; yet, they barely make an impact amidst the more layered characters that flit in and out of the musical.
Both Felix Daly and Deepa Nambiar are excellent as the crooked Thénardiers — in fact they are the Thénardiers — thriving in absolute depravity and dissoluteness, living life through their wits and with gay abandon.
The star of the production is, however, unmistakably Javert. Sandeep John’s impassive face, measured words and rigid notion of justice, hides a man tormented by what he thinks he knows and what he discovers. Another little gem is Lorcan Conlon, who plays feisty street-urchin Gavroche, getting the gamine character down to a pat — from the pronounced accent to the grandiose gestures, exaggerated sense of his own importance and absolute joie-de-vivre.
The effective use of lighting, versatile sets and outstanding live music helped create the pathos, desperation and grimness of the era. The entire story was related through music — to help the audience along were neon boards on the side of the stage that filled the gaps in the story. But the music itself would have been enough — the haunting notes more than captured the injustice of social justice, the endless search for love and belonging, the complexity of a community, the constant but often futile fight for equality and the triumph of the human spirit.
