This was the first Professional production of Les Miserables that I've seen. I was in it, I've seen two different high school versions (one with Trent, who absolutely rocked as Jean Valjean....but that may be biased) and the concert version on tape, but I haven't seen the full professional production. And it is different than the high school version- there's more. Not much more, and it didn't really add to the story. In fact, I think there was really only one or two things that the professional production had that wasn't in the high school version that I thought helped. Other than that, the high school version is more of a refined version than it is condensed.
Anyway, it was an excellent show. I thought everyone did extremely well, especially Jean Valjean. I've heard some crapy Valjeans (one of them being the Broadway recording) and this guy nailed it. Normally it's played by a different person, but the guy who played it tonight was fabulous. Each person in turn did their part very well (though Marius seemed to yell Empty Chairs at Empty Tables more than sing it, which bothered me a little). If I were to talk about each person and how well they did, you would all close your browser windows and go to bed because the blog would be too long. Just know that as a person who was in the show and has listened to several different people play each part, I though the show was excellent and each person did at least as good as I've heard it before, if not better. Some of them even did better than the international tenth anniversary concert edition. Now that's saying something.
A very powerful story, it is hard to not be moved by the show. It was excellently done and a wonderful night.
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