Okay… So, let me set up this topic with the retelling of the
story of our Saturday (as I’ve retold this story a number of times already). It’s
the end of the school year and our department hosted our Faculty, Students and
Family picnic complete with barbeque, ultimate Frisbee and soda (hooray…). I
ended up wearing shorts because the weather has really been up and down
recently with snow in May and then sunshine days later. While the picnic was
going on, I had the thought that Les
Miserables was playing down in Colorado Springs (near where the picnic was)
because a friend on Facebook posted that they were looking for someone to go
with on Saturday. I always like the idea of attending the theater spontaneously
(something I’ve done with Laura a few times now), and after looking at prices
online, we figured we could go to the theater in person to try to get tickets.
Sure enough, the Les Miserables
poster was outside (a telltale sign that it must be playing there) and I asked
for tickets for that night’s show.
While we were waiting for the show, I really wanted to try
to find a pair of pants in town so that I didn’t look so disheveled since we
were going to the theater (I already had hat hair and looked like I was coming
from a ball game). We walked all over downtown and found two stores that had
men’s clothing. However, both really didn’t have a decent pair of pants for the
situation ($80 for hiking pants or $155 for suit pants were my only two realistic
options). We ended up agreeing that the shorts wouldn’t be too big of a deal. So,
we sat down to dinner at a brewery as we killed time before the show. When we
were almost finished eating, I quickly looked at the tickets to double check
the start time and realized they were not for Les Mis. They were, in fact, for the Colorado Springs Philharmonic’s
Star Spangled Pops (no wonder why we were able to get center orchestra seats on
the day of the show for only $55 each). We got the date wrong. After going back
to the theater to explain our mistake with dates and found out that Les Mis wouldn’t be playing until the
first week of June, we could only exchange the tickets for another Philharmonic
event and had to pay full price for future tickets for Les Mis (balcony seats since it’s a members only night).
Spontaneous theater-going gone wrong. “It’s an old song… it’s a sad song… but,
we’re gonna sing it again and again”. We will definitely continue our attempts
of spontaneous theater-going in the future.
So, long story short, the next Broadway musicals we will see
are Hadestown and Be More Chill on June 1st. We’re
coming back to see Les Miserables on
June 5th and are taking our kid/kids (we’ll see) to Wicked on June 9th. And… hooray… we unintentionally get to see
the Colorado Springs Philharmonic production of “Bolero” this weekend.
In preparation of seeing a show, Laura and I generally
listen to the OBC recording to get familiarized with the story. We’ve pretty
much been listening to the cast albums of Hadestown
and Be More Chill on repeat since
we bought our Broadway tickets back in December before either show had even
opened. The OBC of Be More Chill was
just recently released earlier this month, which we listened to the morning it
came out, and Hadestown won’t be
released until after we see it on Broadway. With that background in mind, we
started listening to Les Miserables in
the car. I saw the national tour of Les
Mis back in the 2010/2011 timeframe in Boston and remember not really
knowing the story at all at the time and not really being able to follow the
plot. Laura, on the other hand, knows every word of every song in Les Mis (similar to Rent, which we saw together back in February, and Phantom of the Opera, which we’d like to
see together when it plays in Denver later this year), both of which, she has
seen multiple times (I’ve seen both shows just once). When you look at a classic
show like Les Mis, which is the 5th
longest running Broadway show in history, you get a sense of timelessness; that
these shows reach audiences and speak to audiences regardless of time and age.
These are the “old songs” as Hermes puts it. As we were listening to Les Mis, Laura even said something to
the effect of this show being able to be retold in today’s time and backdrop
(the single mother having to make really difficult decisions to try to provide
for their kid and growing up in a sub-optimal set of circumstances).
So, what makes a show timeless? What are the qualities of a
story or a production that are able to transcend time and reach audiences
regardless of their backgrounds or upbringings (the stories that we hear “again
and again”)? In talking about Hamilton,
the former President, Barack Obama, said that it was a truly American story and
embodies the American Dream. Certainly, there is some facet of life within that
show that anyone can relate to whether it is the pursuit of something greater,
internal drive and motivation, feelings of inadequacy and even feelings
surrounding a relationship or bad experiences thereof. These are the things
that speak to us in that case.
Laura and I saw Cats
together shortly after we found out that her grandmother, who lived in Chicago,
sadly passed away. Regardless of how “silly” or “story-less” people think that Cats is, in that moment when Grizabella
sings “Memories” and of the time when she was beautiful then, I could see that
Laura had tears in her eyes, that she related that story with the memory of her
grandmother. The idea of timelessness in this instance not only refers to the
overall retelling of a story or relatability in a broad sense, but rather in a
relative one. Perhaps that’s true with stories and storytelling in general
terms.
Laura and I are currently finishing up a book called “Enrique’s
Journey” by Sonia Nazario about Honduran migrants and I couldn’t help but to
think back to the story of Les Miserables.
Particularly, I drew the parallel between Fantine working tirelessly and
selflessly to provide for her daughter Cosette while she lived away from her
with the story of Lourdes making the difficult decision to illegally migrate to
the U.S. to provide for Enrique. Both had to make incredibly difficult
decisions to provide for their children and were forced to make decisions of
care for them while they were away. They wanted what was best for their
children even though they weren’t in a place to be the ones that could give
that to them in that moment. Fantine called on Jean Valjean and Lourdes called
on Enrique’s paternal grandmother. That story seems timeless and an “old song”
or repetitively perpetuating through time as well. In fact, in 2006, when the
book was published 48,000 migrant children tried to come to the U.S. to find
their long lost parents. Enrique, himself, struggled with leaving his girlfriend
Maria Isabel pregnant with their soon to be daughter, Jasmin in Honduras. And,
the cycle continues.
Hadestown, nominated
for 14 Tonys and which is the retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth,
follows the same pattern. It’s an “old song” but has been described as “prophetic”,
“eerily apt for the time” and relevant and relatable to today’s audience. I’m
looking forward to seeing the portrayal of Hades with our current political
backdrop even though Anais Mitchel wrote the music nearly a decade before.
We flew to Chicago the day of Laura’s grandmother’s funeral
and the underlying tone of Laura’s memories and the retelling of family stories
of her grandmother were so beautiful to me; that those stories too paint this
setting or perspective through which we think. This is one of the great things
I love about Broadway musicals; that we are able to relate to these stories, to
use them as context for our lives and to adopt empathy for the people and
characters involved. This is something I hope to see more of in the future.
Also that morning, before we boarded the plane, and
hopefully something that provided a bit of levity for Laura, we were able to
download the OBC of Be More Chill,
which was just released that morning to listen to on our flight to Chicago.
There is some debate about how it relates to the original cast album, but it
has definitely been growing on me as I hear it again and again.
Les Miserables, as
it turns out, will be the first Broadway show that I’ve seen more than once. It
is most definitely timeless and relatable, even to think of it in the context
of and draw parallels to the American Revolution portrayed in Hamilton. We tell and retell these
stories again and again and they truly encapsulate Hermes’ idea of the “old
song”. What is interesting and unique in all of these instances is the means
through which we relate; that we all have a piece of the story to bring in. I’m
looking forward to our trip to Broadway and the shows stacked up for us to see
when we get back. I look forward to taking out kids to shows so that they too
can be part of the experience and learn the importance that storytelling has in
building our own perspectives. Most importantly, I look forward to hearing
their own connections to the stories and to hear the relative connections that
we will make in those moments when we see them.
