Si­mon Lee

Three Mar­i­onettes choirs com­bined to cel­e­brate the 50th an­niver­sary of Trinidad's old­est chorale, with what is un­doubt­ed­ly its most am­bi­tious pro­duc­tion. On Sun­day night, with World Cup ju­bi­la­tion and dev­as­ta­tion still sim­mer­ing, the Mar­i­onettes se­nior, youth and chil­dren's choirs pre­viewed what is ar­guably the world's most suc­cess­ful mu­si­cal–Les Mis�rables–at Queen's Hall.

The run will con­tin­ue this com­ing week­end and just as on the foot­ball pitch in Rio, there will be much com­pe­ti­tion for fi­nal awards, with pre­vi­ous un­knowns dis­tin­guish­ing them­selves along­side the usu­al sus­pects.

Trans­lat­ed var­i­ous­ly as: The Wretched, The Vic­tims, The Dis­pos­sessed or even The Out­siders, the mu­si­cal, based on the orig­i­nal 1980 French pro­duc­tion by Messrs Boubil and Schon­berg, is yet an­oth­er adap­ta­tion of 19th-cen­tu­ry French po­et and nov­el­ist Vic­tor Hugo's mam­moth 1862 nov­el of re­demp­tion. Those who've nev­er heard of Hugo (but will sure­ly know his un­for­get­table char­ac­ter The Hunch­back of Notre Dame) will prob­a­bly be fa­mil­iar with the main pro­tag­o­nist of Les Miz, ex-con­vict Jean Val­jean, if not in his French in­car­na­tion, then as the Fugi­tive in the epony­mous TV se­ries.

Great lit­er­ary char­ac­ters nev­er die, nor do the nar­ra­tives which birth them. While the Mar­i­onettes' de­ci­sion to present what has been Lon­don's longest run­ning mu­si­cal (first per­formed in 1985) was prob­a­bly based on artis­tic chal­lenge and as a suit­able fol­low-up to the equal­ly am­bi­tious 2011 pro­duc­tion of Bizet's Car­men, Hugo's orig­i­nal in­ten­tions for Les Miz and his so­cial con­scious­ness make it even more rel­e­vant to con­tem­po­rary Trinidad.

Al­though his his­tor­i­cal nov­el was based on events in France from 1815-32, Hugo's text ad­dress­es uni­ver­sal so­cial is­sues of pover­ty and in­equal­i­ty, the ex­ploita­tion and abuse of women and chil­dren, class prej­u­dice and bour­geois hypocrisy as well as de­bates in moral phi­los­o­phy–jus­tice, law, truth. And be­cause it is root­ed in the hu­man con­di­tion there is much about love, loy­al­ty, sac­ri­fice, treach­ery, ve­nal­i­ty, cor­rup­tion and fi­nal­ly re­demp­tion.

As Hugo wrote: "Wher­ev­er men go in ig­no­rance or de­spair, wher­ev­er women sell them­selves for bread, wher­ev­er chil­dren lack a book to learn or a warm hearth, Les Mis�rables knocks at the door and says, 'Open up, I am here for you.'"

By de­f­i­n­i­tion, a mu­si­cal is as much about act­ing as is it is about singing; sim­ply put, it's a play with songs. But the chal­lenges of pre­sent­ing Les Miz are com­pound­ed by spo­ken di­a­logue be­ing re­placed by "very dif­fi­cult, mu­si­cal­ly un­pre­dictable recita­tives."

It is the act­ing and the recita­tives, which will need some hon­ing, in or­der to match the su­perla­tive singing (ac­com­pa­nied by an or­ches­tra to match) and ex­cel­lent stage pro­duc­tion, which the first-time au­di­ence of this Caribbean pre­miere en­joyed on Sun­day.

Like oth­er 19th-cen­tu­ry so­cial re­al­ist/ex­pres­sion­ist nov­els (Dick­ens, Dos­toyevsky) the plot of Les Miz is com­plex and con­vo­lut­ed, mix­ing cas­es of mis­tak­en and as­sumed iden­ti­ties, an ex­pan­sive cast of char­ac­ters and broad tem­po­ral set­ting. But in essence, the struc­ture of both nov­el and de­rived mu­si­cal are dri­ven by the trope of the hunter and his prey: the ex-con­vict Val­jean (sen­tenced for steal­ing a loaf of bread to feed his starv­ing sis­ter and her child) pur­sued across France and the years by his neme­sis, po­lice chief Javert (iron­i­cal­ly the off­spring of an­oth­er jail­bird).

Sun­day's pro­duc­tion brought for­mer DPP pros­e­cu­tor Nigel Floyd (who shares the role with Mar­lon de Bique) on­stage as Val­jean, to Mar­vin Smith's Javert. As the ax­is around which the en­tire pro­duc­tion re­volves the duo were in­de­fati­ga­ble; Floyd cred­i­ble in his tran­si­tion from em­bit­tered re­ject to com­pas­sion­ate re­deemer, while Smith main­tained his so­cio­path­ic rigid­i­ty –rep­re­sent­ing blind ad­her­ence to the law rather than nat­ur­al jus­tice–right up to his even­tu­al sui­cide. One of the many sung high­lights was the face-off be­tween Val­jean and Javert, The Con­fronta­tion: a duet of two im­placa­ble wills meet­ing head on. Val­jean's role is un­bear­ably de­mand­ing and Floyd rarely fal­tered in song; oc­ca­sion­al­ly in some of the recita­tives his con­trol of pitch wob­bled, but this is a mi­nor ob­ser­va­tion of an oth­er­wise ster­ling per­for­mance.

The fire­works en­gen­dered by the clash of fal­li­ble man and im­placa­ble law en­forcer were deft­ly ame­lio­rat­ed by Er­rol James' al­most dul­cet Bish­op, the agent of a deus ex machi­na, who, un­like the hu­mans who self-serv­ing­ly and of­ten hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly, main­tain an op­pres­sive sta­tus quo, of­fers the pos­si­bil­i­ty of grace.

Giv­en the emo­tion­al in­ten­si­ty of the plot, Hugo, like his Eng­lish coun­ter­part Dick­ens, avoid­ed burn­ing out read­ers with gen­er­ous help­ings of com­e­dy or even bathos. Be­tween the two poles of Val­jean and Javert are less­er mor­tals, most­ly com­pris­ing "the wretched" of the ti­tle. Re­call­ing such fairy­tales as Cin­derel­la is the sub­plot of the fall­en Fan­tine (an im­pov­er­ished woman de­sert­ed by her bour­geois lover and left alone to raise their daugh­ter Cosette). The trans­form­ing Val­jean, now a suc­cess­ful yet phil­an­thropic fac­to­ry own­er and may­or, pities the spurned Fan­tine, dri­ven to pros­ti­tu­tion to feed her sick daugh­ter, and makes her a deathbed vow to care for Cosette.

At which point the in­ten­si­ty of the chase di­verts to bawdy com­e­dy in the form of Cosette's ve­nal "fos­ter par­ents", tav­ern keep­er Th�nardier (en­er­get­i­cal­ly per­formed by David Stephens) and his mock­ing wife (chill­ing­ly reprised by pro­duc­tion di­rec­tor Car­o­line Tay­lor).

Cosette's sit­u­a­tion is well known in the Caribbean, par­tic­u­lar­ly Haiti, where the trav­es­ty of the restavek syn­drome con­tin­ues: small chil­dren sent to rel­a­tives or guardians as do­mes­tic helps, re­duced to abu­sive slav­ery. Lit­tle Cosette was one of the stand­out per­for­mances–by An­nalise Em­manuel; she pro­ject­ed the frailty and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty which Hugo must sure­ly have in­tend­ed.

The in­ter­pre­ta­tion of her guardians' roles may have been mis­guid­ed, how­ev­er. While both Th�nardiers cap­tured the ug­li­ness which in­fects hu­mans who have sold their souls for greed, and the song Mas­ter of the House might go down just as well in one of the rings of In­fer­no as in an old-style mu­sic hall, the de­ci­sion to re­tain the Cock­ney ac­cent of the Lon­don pro­duc­tion is ques­tion­able.

Mar­i­onettes artis­tic and cre­ative di­rec­tor Gret­ta Tay­lor ar­gues in the pro­gramme: "In Eng­lish its Cock­ney turn of phrase al­lows a com­ic con­trast be­tween the work­ing class and the well-to-do who ex­ploit­ed them, so we have left the ac­cent as it was in­tend­ed." Giv­en that Les Miz is uni­ver­sal and de­rives its pow­er not from its set­ting but its hu­man dra­ma, per­haps it would be more ap­pro­pri­ate for a Trinida­di­an/Caribbean pro­duc­tion to use Cre­ole. The un­der/work­ing class here don't speak or sing in Cock­ney, but they do ex­press them­selves in Cre­ole. The same con­trast Gret­ta Tay­lor wished to re­tain could have been just as suc­cess­ful­ly de­liv­ered in Tri­ni Cre­ole, to the Trinida­di­an Eng­lish of the bour­geois roles.

This is mere­ly a morsel of con­struc­tive crit­i­cism, which in no way de­tracts from an over­all as­sess­ment, which is of a high­ly am­bi­tious and large­ly suc­cess­ful pro­duc­tion.

In terms of pure en­ter­tain­ment Les Miz can­not be fault­ed and with­out re­veal­ing too much more of this hu­man dra­ma which af­firms so many of the qual­i­ties T&T now so des­per­ate­ly needs re-af­firm­ing, men­tion must be made of some glo­ri­ous new tal­ents join­ing the ranks of the es­tab­lished. Danielle Williams (Cosette) and Raguel Gabriel (Mar­ius) have both the voice and ex­pe­ri­ence to car­ry the ro­man­tic core of the plot and the mes­sage of tri­umph, hope, and love over greed, de­cep­tion and ha­tred, but it was Au­ro­ra Tardieu's in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the role of Epo­nine, in her self­less un­re­quit­ed love for Mar­ius, which was as riv­et­ing as the diminu­tive Elsie Blanc's por­tray­al of the street urchin Gavroche. Here are two new stars whom both the Mar­i­onettes and the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty must wel­come and con­tin­ue to nur­ture. Ku­dos al­so to the stage crew who seam­less­ly re­arranged the stage to ac­com­mo­date a dizzy­ing num­ber of scene changes with­out for a mo­ment in­ter­rupt­ing the mo­men­tum.

With the World Cup out of the way, I can think of no oth­er dis­trac­tion wor­thy of keep­ing any­one away from Queen's Hall this week­end. Those who choose to miss this op­por­tu­ni­ty of rev­el­ling in a Caribbean pre­miere de­liv­ered with such panache and tal­ent are in­deed mis­er­able.