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PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: Les Misérables — Here Hugo Again
By Harry Haun
10 Nov 2006
While doormen badgered celebs and press to take their seats inside the Broadhurst Nov. 9, Lenny and Frunye Croote of Teaneck, NJ, stood on both sides of the theatre's entranceway — proud and erect, like the bishop's candlesticks — unnoticed and noticing everything, drinking in a sight for sore (if starry) eyes: the second Broadway coming of Les Misérables, Alain
Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg's musicalization of Victor Hugo's mighty novel.
Opening night was the Crootes' fourth consecutive trek to Les Miz Land. Why? [I had to ask.] "We wanted to see its development," Lenny explained. "It's getting, like, right on."
They had dream-seating their previous trips — "really we were right up front," he said —but, first-night being first-night, the Crootes were sentenced to the nose-bleeding region of the balcony. Sensing he was speaking to a lonely troll, Lenny made the take-her-she's-mine beau-geste and asked if I had an extra ticket for Frunye. I declined, even though she had a limited-edition, made-in-Germany watch with the young Cosette logo she got on eBay.
The three and a half years Les Misérables was absent from the Broadway boards were not as rough on the Crootes as you might imagine. "No," she chirped. "We saw it in Waterbury, LA, Philadelphia, three times in New Jersey—and, if necessary, we'd have gone to England."
That trip, as it turns out, won't be necessary. [The now Sir] Cameron Mackintosh has re-produced his original hit—the third longest-running on Broadway (6,680 performances, or a couple of months beyond the 16-year mark, which is something when you consider Jean Valjean's flight from injustice and the obsessively righteous Javert was 17 years).
For luck, Mackintosh and director John Caird cranked it up again on the same turntable in the same rehearsal hall at 890 Broadway that they used for his original production.
(Trevor Nunn still shares "Directed and Adapted" credit with Caird, but he never set foot out of England, where he is busily embroiled in directing a Porgy and Bess revival. It opened Nov. 9 as well, so technically he had shows premiering on two continents.)
From the signs of the barricade-storming at the Broadhurst and the shouts of its doormen, they have given the public—and the Crootes—what they wanted. The crunch and clatter of customers elbowing their way into the theatre or chatting it up in the aisle, oblivious to the ebb and flow of traffic, gave off a positive theatrical vibe. This was a happy homecoming.
Underplaying the event, The Publicity Office listed only three expected celebrities. Lucy Liu was seen exiting the theatre at the end of the evening only by a junior publicist, but the other two—Joan Rivers and Rosie O'Donnell—gravitated quite naturally toward the
glitz and grinding cameras. Rosie was packing a hand camera, shooting video of the event for "The View" and quipping "I work cheap." Her "View"-mate, Elisabeth Hasselbeck,
was practically giddy with anticipation: "I've only seen Les Miz with a traveling group at Techpac in Rhode Island when I was in junior high, and I have not stopped listening to the music since. When I told my mom I was coming here tonight, she was beside herself."
As if the normal commotion accompanying a Broadway opening was enough, there was some faux commotion going on too for an independent film borrowing the glam backdrop. "Farm Girl in New York" is currently before the cameras, directed by J. Robert Spencer, who, by night, is Nick Massi in Jersey Boys. "Basically, it's 'The Wedding Crashers'-Meets-'Waiting for Guffman,' and it's a hilarious comedy," he said. "I sorta have creative control. I met an investor who trusted me and loved the script. I wrote the script with Jeff Schecter, who plays Mike in A Chorus Line, and our friend, Josh Wade, and we're all starring in it. J. Elaine Marcos, who's in the ensemble of The Wedding Singer, and Allison Munn from 'Elizabethtown' are also in it. We're gonna hit the film festivals."
Andrew McCarthy, off in a week for some Montreal moviemaking ("
The Spiderwick Chronicles"), posed politely when asked—several times!—for photographs with fans. It was his first time at the barricades, he confessed. Another first-timer—incredibly!—was the
very first Marius, Michael Ball, in from London. "I was here anyway, having meetings with people, and I thought, ‘Well, I'm here. I can't miss this.' I did the original
production, and I never saw it." Time has marched on for young Marius. Next he'll play Hajj in Kismet for the English National Opera, starting rehearsal in May, opening in June.
Max Von Essen, a Marius cover at the end of the original Broadway run, made the scene, returning from 1) a Houston West Side Story and 2) a Washington D.C. Mame. On
Sunday he picks up Prize One—for Outstanding Male Performance (Desperate Measures,
a country-musicalization of Measure for Measure) at the National Music Theatre Festival gala. It Begins, Max. The event will also roast/salute producer Kevin McCollum.
The Man of a Thousand Faces among the New Faces of Broadway, the always difficult to recognize Matthew Morrison, was sporting a military-looking buzz-cut this particular evening—"for a future role," he said, "Ten Million Miles, a new Patty Griffin musical at
the Atlantic Theater Company with Sutton Foster. We're going to put it out now and see if it works or not. Michael Mayer will direct. Rehearsals are going to start in April."
Applause publisher Michael Messina had in tow a new author, Margaret Vermette,
who's is the process of becoming the Boswell for the evening's authors. "The Musical World of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg" is to be published by Applause around March 22, when their latest, The Pirate Queen, comes swinging into the Hilton Theatre. (Their other
two worlds? Martin Guerre, which is still circling for a Broadway opening, and Miss
Saigon, which landed at the Broadway Theatre and stayed there for nearly a decade.)
The twice-Tonyed Martin Pakledinaz, who drew praise from the Chicago critics for outfitting The Pirate Queen so lavishly, was in attendance, along with Playbill's man in
London Sheridan Morley, High Fidelity lyricist Amanda Green, Avenue Q director
Jason Moore (in the early stages of Shrek: The Musical), Sara Gettelfinger(recording
with Universal) and Jeff Calhoun (the latest to choreograph on a Broadway turntable, via Grey Gardens).
There's a tavern in the town for such rabble-rousing first-nighters, so after the show they marched on Warner LeRoy's old hangout on the green up in Central Park for additional
brew and good cheer. No torches were allowed, but the place glowed with firefly lighting.
Alexander Gemignani, a great hulk of a character actor fairly new to the Broadway performing scene, trimmed down sharply for his first outing as a leading man and sings a glorious Jean Valjean. His musical gifts are in his genes: His father is Paul Gemignani, one of the most respected musical theatre conductors of the day, and his mother is the actress and opera singer, Carolann Page, seen last September in the York Theatre
Company's production of Asylum: The Strange Case of Mary Lincoln. "I said 'Don't get any ideas about putting your mother in an asylum,'" beamed the proud and happy mom.
"I saw Les Misérables when I was like 10 or 12 with my dad," recalled Gemignani, "and I bought the original cast album, and I burnt a hole in it, playing it over and over and over. It's an operatic score, sung through, but it also has a real flair for contemporary pop music. It's a big journey, but it's an honor to get to be able to do it. You gotta go for it."
Another actor making the big leap forward from background to foreground is Norm Lewis as Valjean's demonically dogged nemesis, Javert. "People think of him as a
villain, but he's really not," contended the actor playing him. "He's a guy with a major
purpose in his life. He believes in right or wrong. No gray area. It's all black or all white." Continued...
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