Les Misérables Production

from Hymers College Hymerian 2021-2022

Legacy Your is their Future

‘Encore! ... hugely compelling, from the opening number to the dramatic finale… thank you for a wonderful night’s entertainment.’

Dench theatre, where we were able to get a feel for staging. What helped us largely was our trip to London in January, where we had the incredible opportunity of a workshop at Pineapple Studios. Led by Adam Linstead, a member of the West End ‘Phantom Of The Opera’ cast, who was blown away by our performance of ‘At The End Of The Day’, with which he helped us choreograph and refine our vocals. We then saw the production live at the Sondheim Theatre in the evening, after eating at Pizza Express and walking through Chinatown. Seeing professional actors deliver the full performance and watching it from the audience perspective was amazing, and certainly the push we needed to bring our rendition of Les Mis up to a similar level.

Thursday was a leisurely day, spent taking in the sights of Covent Garden, Leicester Square and visiting the Theatre and Performance collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was most insightful.

Before leaving for Hull, we also went to the matinee performance of ‘Frozen’ at the Duke of York Theatre, something some of us were maybe a bit too old for! Nonetheless, the visual effects were stunning. Everyone enjoyed the trip and we came away with a new-found mindset and skills to bring to our own performance.

March 2022

Countless rehearsals later, the time had finally come to bring Victor Hugo’s epic production to life. The two-and-a-half-hour show spanned from Wednesday 16 to Saturday 19 March and tickets were sold out every single night. We were met with standing ovations, and many parents saying it was the ‘best production they had ever seen’, comparing ours with that of professional theatre companies.

With too many stand-out performances to mention all by name, from the hilarious comic genius of James’ ‘Thernadier’ to Thomas’s powerful ‘Javert’ and Kaie’s ‘Enjolras’, everyone brought something special. However, the show really couldn’t go on without Charlie as ‘Jean Valjean’. I asked him about his time playing the lead role:

‘Playing Valjean was amazing! As someone who has always looked at Les Misérables as a standout musical, it was a show that I had always wanted to take part in. Playing Valjean gave me an experience that I will never forget, from the first rehearsal all the way through to the last bow. Putting on this show gave me and so many others an opportunity to grow as actors and most importantly, have fun! This was my last show with Hymers and I want to thank everyone who has been involved over the 10 years. Teachers, backstage crew and friends, thank you.’

Though an ambitious production to take on, the friendships, the songs, the buzz of being on stage and the fond memories to take away from it made being part of this fantastic production worthwhile. A huge thank you to the efforts of our tech staff, music and drama teachers for their time and dedication to make Les Misérables possible.

‘Even the darkest night will end And the Sun will rise.’

Francesca Year 10

Francesca’s interview with Director, Miss McLeod:

How do you get the best performance from your students?

That’s a difficult question - I’m sure the cast would have a lot to say about that, but I think it is a balance of encouraging and praising mixed with pushing them out of their comfort zone and challenging them. You have to get to know your cast members as the answer to this is individual and personal to each person. Some people need constant support and guidance every step of the way, requiring detailed direction and praise to build their self belief, and others needs stretching and opportunities to broaden their skills.

I think a general answer that applies to everyone is to provide the safest and most welcoming platform that facilitates and invites students to want to improve and to support each other and achieve their personal best.

The narrative of Les Mis is a harrowing one. Given its mature themes and deeply emotional nature, how did the students get into character?

Rehearsing a huge production such as Les Mis takes time; it is a layering process. Nothing happens quickly and the end product may look like actors are immersing themselves into the depths of the French Revolution (or actually the June Rebellion set 45 years later!). However, you have to remember, that by the time the students are all brandishing guns and chucking themselves of the barricade, that it started as kids stood in their uniform after school on a Friday, shouting and miming guns and pretending to have a barricade. We didn’t get the backing tracks which included the sound effects until a few weeks before. They had to be programmed into the desk and so the technical support came in a bit later on. So by the time, the students are able to put on a costume, actually practise climbing the barricade (which arrived only two weeks before curtains up) and timing the gun shots to the effects provided, they are anything but affected by the story-line. It is like this layering process protects the actor to be honest. It may be an emotional thing for the audience (which is the aim!), but I promise you, most cast members would have had a million and one things going through their minds whilst onstage - mostly to remember to make sure that they fell off the barricade behind the curtain, so that when the curtains shut, they weren’t stuck in front of it playing dead on the floor in the next scene! This happened by the way in the Matinee Dress Rehearsal!

Les Mis is truly an epic production, and arguably the most popular stage musical ever made. With this in mind, was there ever a point you thought you’d been over-ambitious?

No actually. We had planned this for a while and knew we had the cast for it (twice over it turns out!), so casting a fantastic bunch of people was never going to be a problem. Mrs Cook and I had worked together for many years and had fine-tuned a productive way of rehearsing. We knew how to structure rehearsals to make the best use of time and know both our strengths and weaknesses, so we naturally work as one. We had to do a lot of prep-work and dedicate many hours to this, but during rehearsals whilst we had the slots with the cast, it was never anything but fun, exciting and fulfilling. I’ve built up a good relationship with the set hire company too, and so can plan and plot the set and how it will be utilised carefully and confidently much sooner than in previous years. We taped out the barricade and constantly fed this information to the cast members during the rehearsals - we would often show them photos of the set and they found this really helpful to imagine it and plan better.

In the casting process, what attributes were you looking for in Jean Valjean?

He had to be able to hold a show! I cannot discuss our casting process in detail without mentioning names, so it’s hard, but let’s just say it is like a jigsaw puzzle. Some students are quite fixed into a part from the get go, whereas, a lot hover around, between two or three possibles until the casting is permanently fixed, so a few people were up for the role. It ended up being Charlie for a number of reasons, but mainly, he could sustain the long, disembodied high note in falsetto beautifully. Once he was offered the opportunity, he focused on practising singing ‘a lot’, to develop his strength. He seemed to accept the challenge and understood the importance of leading by example, and I think for everyone who went to see the show, they would agree that he succeeded in doing this.