Why You So Nervous?

An all too short TV commercial with rare footage of the first Canadian cast of Les Mis, 1989.

eponine thenardier they could never make me hate you

Javert logic:

“This woman flung herself on Monsieur Bamatabois, who is an elector and the proprietor of that handsome house with a balcony, which forms the corner of the esplanade, three stories high and entirely of cut stone. Such things as there are in the world!”

I've seen Cabaret, Newsies, Hadestown, and Les Miserables are trending now bc how relevant these songs are

This is your gentle reminder that theater is political

Three Javerts on one stage: Michael Ball, Philip Quast and Bradley Jaden at the opening night of "Les Miserables - The Arena Spectecular" in Sydney.

Gotta say I am both very dubious of, and fascinated by, the concept of a "Jean Valjean Prequel". like...are we gonna focus on the grueling poverty of his life as a peasant in the Ancien Regime? Are we going to watch as multiple generations of his family are literally killed by deprivation and overwork? See the faint echoes of the revolution from the POV of a family that is not at all involved in the politics ? Are we going to just...spend those 19 years he was in prison IN PRISON? Every beating and escape attempt? the casual corruption and cruelty of the officials and guards? Might we get sort of meta and see some riff on Claude Gueux play out there?

the thing is we do actually know what happens to JVV before the book starts and it's all bad, grindingly exhaustingly bad ; if they're committing to that then Respect, honestly, it's not like "poverty and prison are soul crushing" is less relevant these days

And/but if they're not committing to that...what the heck are they gonna do with it ??

Ponine & Cosette

not rlly sure how tumblr works but heres knife wife and the babygirl antichrist

Les Misérables' OC character, Nande, by Su Manshu

Su Manshu was a revolutionary poet who wrote a translation of Book One of Les Misérables into traditional Chinese.

Copy and pasted from a comment I made in Dec 2024:

Su Manshu wrote a self-insert (Nande) who was a mouthpiece for the favour of the revolution of China (which was ruled by the Qing Dynasty at the time).

However, since there wasn't much of a freedom in press in regards to the criticism of it, the main character (the self insert) dies.

During the translation (which was only book 1), there is a running comparison of Chinese and French history, and also anti-Christian sentiments due to Su's fear of the 'Western influence' of China.

The translation is so different, there is some unintended comedic elements to it in retrospect, but I'm sure during the time when it was written, it was truly a piece of revolution. It's just funny if you take the political context out of it.

There is also mistranslations, such as the Bishop asking how many coins Jean Valjean has, and telling him that his place is not a hostel and therefore he doesn't need to pay -> to then become the Bishop asking Jean Valjean how much coins he has, and telling him that it is indeed like a hostel, and thus needs to pay him with all the coins that he has (rather than JvJ keeping them).

There is an academic argument apparently on whether or not mistranslations such as these were intentional, or if Su wasn't as proficient in English as we believed he was to be (since he translated from Wilbour's trans.)

It also is a running theme throughout the translation that JvJ is a bad guy.

The paper I read doesn't talk about other characters, so I don't know how other characters are presented unfortunately. Probably because it overly focuses on the OC lmao

ExR + touches

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Bonus: