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“Les Miz” is overrated: A Letter to a Theatre-Going Public

Les Miserables or Les Miz is a hit musical which debuted in The Barbican Centre in 1985. Les Misérables is a comédie musicale which began life as a French concept album in 1980, earning enough money and attention to stage in Paris for a few months before the performance hall was booked out by a circus. It was a resounding success in the French theatre context, starring local actors and pop singers and selling out throughout its run.

When the musical was in development in London, the job of writing the English lyrics was given to Herbert Kretzmer. Kretzmer was an English journalist and lyricist who had experience working in opera. While Boublil and his collaborator Jean-Marc Natel are poetic, Kretzmer was much more focused on conveying “useful” information through his lyrics even if it’s phrased simply. This was very much his philosophy. 

Using Gavroche’s number as an example is apt, because the show wouldn't exist if not for him. The early development of the show occured in the late 1970s by the French-Jewish songwriting pair Claude-Michel Schönberg, composer, and lyricist Alain Boublil. Boublil was inspired when he went to see ‘Oliver!’ in London in the late 70s. He saw the actor playing Oliver on stage and it brought to him the image of Gavroche, which sparked the idea of a musical based on Les Misérables.

Here is a comparison of a matching passage from Gavroche’s number on the barricade:

And little people know When little people fight We may look easy pickings But we've got some bite So never kick a dog Because he's just a pup We'll fight like twenty armies And we won't give up So you'd better run for cover When the pup grows up

I fell on the ground (Je suis tombé par terre) That’s the fault of Voltaire (C’est la faute à Voltaire) My nose is in the gutter (Le nez dans le ruisseau) That’s the fault of Rousseau (C’est la faute à Rousseau) Joy is my nature (Joie est mon caractère) That’s the fault of Voltaire (C’est la faute à Voltaire) Misery is my outfit (Misère est mon trousseau) That’s the fault of Rousseau (C’est la faute à Rousseau)

The lyrics in the concept were actually taken from the novel, as a tune Gavorche sings making fun of philosophers and bourgeois values. This version keeps it fun and childish, but at the same time it’s infused with political implications. This becomes even clearer in verses following.

This version was considered too “tough” and “ideological” for a mass-market Les Miz. And what we get in the final show is ‘Little People’, an annoying, superfluous little number which effectively guts all of the interesting parts of Gavroche’s character and situation in the name of more “efficiency” in the scene of Javert’s capture.

The final song’s “cuteness” is probably largely what motivated the younger-skewing casting of Gavroche over past years. He’s about 12-13 in the novel and I don’t like this trend because making Gavroche a young child removes a lot of his agency and awareness, making him a less interesting and significant character.

The rebellion in the novel is based on the June Rebellion of 1832, a republican uprising against the July Monarchy installed two years earlier. It was intended as a constitutional monarchy as a compromise with the republicans, but over the next few years the new freedoms were rolled back. The Rebellion was spurred by the death of Jean Maximilien Lamarque, a former general and popular politician who was critical of the monarchy, who died of cholera from the outbreak which had been raging in Paris over the few months prior.

The article “Outlaw Kings and Rebellion Chic” makes the argument that pop culture consistently recuperates revolutionary sentiment and political violence and villainises ideologically-motivated rebellion. Which also explains the way that the revolutionary students are generally portrayed in adaptations, and how both their ideas and the society they are reacting to are almost never clarified. Despite the fact that they are republicans (as in, believers in a republic and democracy) fighting against an autocratic monarchy, and according to current political norms you would think that they are unambiguously the good guys.

‘Turning’, a number which didn’t exist in the French concept, is an ample example of this. The song was written to give the women in the cast something to do, which is a noble goal. But the sentiment behind the song projects the disillusionment from failed revolutions of the 20th century onto the past. The lyrics construct this idea of these helplessly naïve “schoolboys” who can’t fight or plan their way through a battle.

Boublil and Schonberg are kind of weak adapters. Their adaptation of 'Martin Guerre' showcases a telling creative laziness. The music sounds like a knockoff Les Miz, it has that bombastic grandiosity though it's nonsensical for the setting and concept, and it's an almost Disneyfied version of the story with no real complexity. The show repeatedly references Les Miz's lyrics-ones Boublil didn't even write--which makes it further feel that it's in the shadow of their previous success. In this way, Boublil and Schoenberg are very corporate creators, and this becomes especially apparent in their work after Les Miz. Boublil said that he and Schönberg never had a political agenda in making their shows, and that choosing political subject matter was a kind of repeated accident throughout their career. The politics of the stories they were adapting were never that important to them. I think it’s true.