Have you heard the people sing? (You should!)
Watching Gareth Smith deliver a flawless rendition of ‘Bring Him Home’ at the Liverpool Empire Theatre was all the more impressive knowing that the programme listed him as a Dispensing Optician. It was strange to leaf through the bios of those onstage and read about their full-time occupations, realising they have somehow balanced rehearsing and performing to a professional standard alongside working as the aforementioned optician, a Teaching Assistant, and in PR and Communications, to name a few.
I reserve a certain level of awe for people who are able – and, crucially, willing – to put so much passion, time, and energy into their craft, be that sports, music, or theatre, without being paid. Nothing about last night’s performance of Les Miserablés would indicate that it was an amateur production, and nor would the resounding standing ovation the show received.
Beloved by theatre fans worldwide, this particular performance of Les Mis was presented by BOST (the Birkenhead Operatic Society Trust) Musicals, Liverpool Empire Creative Learning, Romiley Operatic Society, and Tip Top Productions, as part of a project celebrating the musical’s 40th anniversary, named – aptly – the Let the People Sing project. As one of just 11 amateur companies in the UK to be invited by Music Theatre International and Cameron Mackintosh Ltd to present Les Mis in this manner, BOST Musicals and Liverpool Empire Creative took the role of lead producers, with the orchestra ably directed – even through the often extremely dense dry ice – by Paul Lawton.
Without rehashing the plot of a well-loved musical, I’ll note how much of a true pleasure it was to see this particular performance of it. I wrote earlier that nothing would have indicated that this was an amateur performance, but perhaps that’s incorrect – the abject love that each and every cast member so clearly had for musical theatre shone through in their every movement, word, and note. Such tangible passion arguably added an abstract extra element to the show.
It would be fairly impossible to fault anyone’s performance, but I must give particular mention to the depiction of the Thenardiers, the bawdy and increasingly depraved innkeeper and wife, as portrayed by Michael Pearson and Lou Steggals: the duo played off one another perfectly, and hit the mark in bringing some levity to the evening – the audience clapped and booed along as required. I must also mention again Gareth Smith – his Jean Valjean truly was the bedrock in a sea of wonderful performances, and he deserved every second of the rapturous cheers his bows provoked from the audience.
This felt like a notably young cast, which married nicely with one of its other main strengths: the sheer number in the company. Young voices are strong, young voices in great numbers are stronger, and young voices in great numbers filled with a fervor for musical theatre could raise any roof on earth. This benefitted the highly emotive score of Les Mis, especially during bigger numbers such as ‘One Day More’ and ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’, and the consistently high energy provided a constant undercurrent of revolutionary spirit.
The staging of this performance didn’t betray its (technically) amateur status, either – Aaron J Dootson’s lighting under and around the barricade and the various battles was by turn foreboding and actively menacing, and the projections of poignant passages from Victor Hugo’s original book of Les Miserablés at pertinent moments added an extra level of gravitas. Holly Speakman’s set appeared as a cut out of this same book, allowing the audience to ‘enter the story’ before it’s even begun, and a nod must also go to the pleasing complexity of the moveable stair structure used in the barricade.
If anything is taken from this review, it’s hopefully that amateur performances are so often amateur in name only – in my humble opinion, this is every bit as good as something you might see on the West End. Have you heard the people sing? (You should!).