bigR
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rotterdam: another reviewWell, here is the first part of what is becoming (again) a really long review:
Stage: wonderful, huge stage! After the frustrating tininess of the Queens in London, it was glorious to see the show played in a real stage, the way it deserves!
Orchestrations: I�ve never seen the show on Broadway, so this was my first live experience with the new orchestrations. I don�t know if it is fair to compare a theatre experience with a recording, but in any case I have to agree with jqpopcorn: they sound much, much better than the broadway revival orchestra.
The prologue is as powerful as it should be, not that cringy broadway sound. And it is true that the new orchestrations sound more �modern�, if you know what you mean� Still, I loved better the old ones. I�ll never understand why the had to change them.
The worst thing is that there was only one thing from the revival orchestrations that I really loved: the winds just before Marius and Enjolras intervention in Look Down. And they weren�t there anymore  Or maybe I was too busy trying to take in everything (they are so many thing happening at the same time during look down) andI didn�t notice it�
Valjean (Ren� van Kooten): Beautiful voice. His valjean was on the sweeter side and it reminded me of JOJ. Flawless singing, rich voice, his BHH was a delight, and yet� he bored me.
Probably because he was the same exact valjean that I�ve seen 100 hundred times impersonated by a 100 different actors. Now, I don�t mean that everyone should approach the role in such a radical different way as drew sarich does in london, but I really wonder why on earth nodoby ever tries to do anything at all with it? I am so tired of the clonical valjeans� Every actor does little personal things with javert, �ponine, marius, enjolras� why nobody ever does anything with valjean??
Also, he was too young for the part and there was no way I could make myself believe that he was an old man during the second act. All I was seeing was a young man dressed up as a grand-father and pretending to be old.
Javert (Wim van den Driessche): I really would love to see him again. Because my feelings about his javert are a little bit mixed. His looks were perfect for the role, but his voice wasn�t exactly what I expected and it distracted me at first. Also, now and then he looked scared of valjean and he didn�t seem as sure of his authority and his rightfulness as javert should be. When they were a lot of people on stage he kind of didn�t stand out the way a javert should, but then in the more intimate scenes his was very powerful. I loved his Confrontation and his Stars were wonderfully passionate. His suicide was� intense and crazy. He was the most shaken Javert I�ve ever seen. You could see that he had already broken down from the moment he appeared in front of Valjean, before he even opened his mouth, and the beginnig of Suicide was crazy, nearly a Jeckyll and Hyde moment. So, a powerful, interesting, and personal performance. Yep, I think that I really liked him.
Fantine (Nurlaila Karim): I didn�t activelly dislike her, but he was my least favourite performer in the show. I didn�t care about her IDAD. There was nothing wrong about it, but there wasn�t anything special either. In any case, she didn�t move me. And I have serious doubts about her acting choices. At the factory she played a sort of �rebellious� Fantine. She wasn�t the shy, fragile and resigned girl, but more like an �ponine, provoking, standing up to the foreman and holding her own with the factory girls. Also, she decided to approach �come to me� a little bit � la daphne rubin-vega. It wasn�t so exagerated and she never was out of tune, mind you, but she didn�t really sing her part. It was more like a moan than a song. I guess that Nuraila though that since Fantine is dying moaning was more appropiate than singing, but if every single character who dies during the show decides not to sing because dying people don�t have the strenght to do it, we could all live the theatre and go home after the first 20 minutes.
Normal people don�t sing either while they fight their co-workers at a factory. If you can sing then, you can sing while you�re dying, come on!
And this isn't that relevant but I would really like to know why these last years all the Fantines have such a similar look. Maybe that's the way Fantine looks in CamMack's imagination... but I would love to see for once a blond, thin, delicate and frail fairy tale princess, the way I see her in my mind..
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bigR
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Here is part two of my rotterdam review:
-Stage and blocking: I forgot to say anything about it yesterday. London resident director, Mariano Detry, has directed the Rotterdam production too, and from what I�ve read about the new London cast, some of the recent blocking and stage changes in the Queens have obviously been imported from Rotterdam. They have the window during Fantine�s death (that I didn�t really like), and the new lighting for the wedding, with the church and dance hall windows (this was a very nice change). They also have Enjolras falling behind his friends during DYHTPS to ask Grantaire whether he is joining them or not. And Gavroche doesn�t sing �That inspector thinks he�s something� from the bridge but from the niche at the right side of the stage. Oh, and they don�t do any more the slow motion thing during MOTH (and now that they don�t do it I�ve discovered that I liked it).
By the way, I am sure it was a mistake, because the flag is in the pics in the brochure, but apparently someone forgot to bring the red flag into the stage in One Day More, and they had to do without it 
-Th�nardier (Carlo Boszhard): I liked him better during his creepy and evil moments. Dog eats dog was very good. Boszhard was fun when he was supposed to be, but he played Th�nardier too vulgar to my taste. There was a lot of spitting, vomiting, belching, pissing inside bottles, cleaning glasses by frotting them with his crotch� Yes, I know, Th�nardier is not exacty a gentleman, but he has ambitions, he feels that he belongs in a better place, I don�t really see him being that vulgar.
-Mme. Th�nardier (Marjolein Algera): She didn�t impress me that much at the Inn. She was more plain ogre than fun and I don�t remember nothing special about her performance. She improved in the second act,though, and she was really funny at the wedding, constantly flirting with the guests.
-Marius (Peter van Nieuwehuyze, understudy): my friends were disappointed when they discovered that Jamai wasn�t in, but since I don�t see dutch tv, I don�t know him and I didn�t care as long as the undertudy was good. And he was. One of the best in the cast. He played a cute Marius, enthousiastic, na�ve, dreamy (I loved the way it was so obvious that he was lost in his world and wasn�t listening during enjolras speech in red and black), passionate, maybe a little bit too flirty with �ponine (he kissed her on the forehead during �In my life� in a burst of enthousiasm). He was angry and sad In Empty chairs, and properly clumsy and shy in �A heart full of love�. Also, beautiful melodic voice.
-Enjolras (Freek Bartels): Pretty and boyish looking! Only this earned him a few bonus points from the beginning  He had very dark hair and dark skin, but otherwise he looked more similar to brick!enjolras than anyone I remember. Also, he was calm, serious, comanding, charismatic and distant. And he did wonderful bookish things like holding out his hand without even looking back when he run out of amunition, obviously expecting that someone would hand him a new gun. His voice was a little weak in some of the most powerful moments, and I�ve never seen an Enjolras waiving the flag in such a slow motion as he did during the final attack, but otherwise I loved him.
-�ponine (C�line Purcell): She was playful around Marius, but otherwise she was a harsh and sad �ponine, and she moved in a clumsy way that was more �I am the opposite of lady like� than the usual �I am streetwise and that makes me so cool�. Wonderful voice, beautiful OMO. ALFOR with Peter van Nieuwehuyse was delicate and sad and very nice, and she kind of drew her face near to his before dying, but in a very shy way. No kiss.
-Cosette (Suzan Seegers): I didn�t hate her, but she is probably the weakest link in the cast. I didn�t like her voice and she sounded a bit too operatic in some moments. Her acting wasn�t brilliant either. All right, it isn�t exactly easy to make musical!cosette look interesting, but she did nothing with the role. She was just romantic and empty, an uninteresting girl comtemplating the night from her bench in a dreamy way.
-Gavroche (Enzo Coenen): I�m reviewing him with the principals because the kid was simply perfect. Just his looks and his face were wonderful, but he was such a good and natural actor! He was lively, funny, cute, cockish, and he looked so natural all the time! Not at all like repeting a set of gestures learned by heart. When he anounced the death of Lamarque he wasn�t sad but simply angry because nobody was listening to him, and his dead was perfectly beliveable and wasn�t overdone. You don�t usually see a Gavroche like that.
-Ensemble: it was quite a strong ensemble, specially the male cast. They werent�s specially riotious at the inn, but At the end of the day was very good and the students were really passionate. From the smaller roles, I only remember the foreman (richard spijkers) who was specially stalkerish and a really disgusting but fun Bamatabois (jurko van veenendaal).
-Now, for Loony: Monty was dressed in his usual green and pink. When he first appeared he was holding �ponine by the waist, and later on, he kneeled at the center of the stage and he offered her a red rose with a very theatrical gesture (but the silly girl rejected him). I don�t remember anything special at the rue Plumet.
-For the barricade boys fans:
First, the clothes department: because Courfeyrac was wearing shiny green trousers and a velvet red frockcoat and that has to be mentioned. We know that Courfeyrac owned at least a green coat, so it kind of fitted him, but why on earth was Laigle proudly dressed in a BABY PINK jacket (not a �redingote� or an �habit�, but something that looked like a modern jacket) is beyond me. Maybe all his normal clothes got lost in a fire or something? To compensate, they�ve stopped adding fantasy touches to Enjolras wardrobe. No more shiny red or stripped vests, but his classical black 
And I have to mention Combeferre (Dirk Postma). First because he was pretty (like a handsome version of french actor Victor Cassel), and second because of his nice interaction with Enjolras. It was just several small things, like, the way he asked Enjolras to cut them some slack when he approached Marius and Grantaire during Red and Black to tell them off, but he really played the best friend role that is usually asigned to Marius. He didn�t look bookish at all which was weird, but he was really cute
And of course, for the suckers for R/E: Grantaire (Rutger Bulsing, who, speaking of french actors, totally looked like Jean-Hugues Anglade in La Reine Margot): In the caf� he was really cute, boasting a lot in the succes of his don juan impersonation but trying not to get Enjolras too angry with him at same time. Like, when Enjolras approached his table in �don�t let the wine go to your brains�, he tried to hide the bottle and protested with puppy eyes and an �I am not drinking that much� attitude. Also, he was clearly against the �let�s start the revolution tomorrow� idea, but then, when Enjolras confronted him during DYHTPS, he looked overjoyed by his asking him to join, and he inmediatelly jumped in.
After ALFOR he did the London thing of stepping in between when Enjolras is about to kneel to confort Marius, but thank god, he didn�t have that stupid accusing attitude. It was more like a �please, let me do it, you know that I am better with people than you�. In Drink with me, he sang his lines as if he was absolutely terrified and about the break down, which kind of bottered me because since when has R been so scared of dying?, but it is always better than the �we are all going to die because of you, silly boy� thing. Enjolras came down from the barricade to confort him, and after fighting him to get hold of his bottle, he took him in his arms, but in a manly, conforting and unslashy way. Afterwards Enjolras climbed back to the barricade and R went to sleep with one of the women after exchanging a last look with him.
The really funny thing about all this is that the blocking of the second act was exactly the same than when I saw the show in London last april, but with a comanding enjolras who is really in charge, the impression you get is totally different.
-And finally: the show was 3 hours and 15 minutes but the had all the cuts nevertheless. I�ll never get used to them. I hate the rushed barricade and some of them are specially stupid. For example, they�ve cutted the musical intro for Eponine�s errand, but since, wisely, the director decided to make a significant (and much needed to set the mood) pause between gavroche�s bit and eponine�s, at the end, they didn�t save any time at all with the cut. Luckly they kept �Now we pledge ourselves� and 10 little bullets!
And that�s more or less everything. Maybe I should learn to write shorter reviews? (for the scans, you�ll have to wait a couple of weeks, Quique, because I don�t have access to a scanner right now)
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