There could not have been a better selection of stars making up the team performing the musical of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables currently showing at The Crown Theatre in Perth than 16 graduates from Perth’s very own WA Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA).
Almost half of the 33 performers of Les Misérables were trained at WAAPA – returning to Perth as internationally renowned artists, offering a show that entirely merits Time Out’s and The Times’ five-star ratings.
One such performer, Simon Gleeson, plays star of the show Jean Valjean – the ex-convict turned petty thief who is given a new lease on life through the kind act of a benevolent Catholic bishop.
Intent on imitating the kindness shown to him, Valjean becomes an upright man, filling the shoes of a factory owner and mayor of a town.
This, however, comes at the cost of breaking his parole and changing his name in order to evade his relentless adversary, the police inspector Javert, masterfully played by Hayden Tee.
What follows is Valjean’s struggle to combat the injustice and misery suffered by the poverty-stricken lower class of early 19th-century France.
Valjean shows particular interest in Cosette (Emily Langridge), the abused child of an ex-employee, whom he takes under his wing after the death of her ill-fated mother.
Gleeson’s performance in the role of Valjean is as commanding as it is moving. His hair-raising top notes and sombre lower register do exceptional justice to songs such as What Have I Done? Who Am I? and the poignant Bring Him Home.
His talent is matched by Patrice Tipoki’s soul-stirring performance of I Dreamed a Dream in her role as Fantine and Kerrie Anne Greenland’s prodigious On My Own as she impersonates a chagrin-filled Éponine – the latter, in particular, puts on a performance to be remembered.
Les Misérables is renowned as the melodramatic musical that weaves passion with drama, humour with desperation and music with dialogue.
The inspiring and rousing rebel chorus of Do You Hear The People Sing? in the second act of the show is a clear example of these elements coming together, as student insurgents man the barricades and face death in a post-revolutionary France, still caught in the grip of political upheaval.
The emotions of the audience are further tested every time the grotesque innkeepers, Thénardier and his wife (Lara Mulcahy and Trevor Ashley), come on stage to fill the atmosphere with a significant dose of black humour and grim witticism.
As the title suggests, Les Misérables is a story of poverty, pain, isolation, frustration and suffering, but also of love, atonement, self-sacrifice, redemption and forgiveness.
This performance delves into these themes superbly and encapsulates them within such realistic on-stage elements and re-imagined scenery as to make one want to reach out to the stage and feel what 19th-century France may have been like.
Aside from the exceptional voices of the cast, the other great protagonist of the show is Boubil and Schönberg’s blissful, orchestral music, conducted by Geoffrey Castles, which accompanies the vast repertoire of songs.
This show is a musical and theatrical triumph. Judging by the age diversity among those sitting in the audience, it is bound to please those who attended the show in the 1990s and quite possibly hold a new generation of fans in thrall.