As far as Andrew Davies is concerned, adapting Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables” to the screen independent of Alain Boubil, Jean-Marc Natel, and Herbert Kretzmer’s juggernaut musical was nothing short of an overdue necessity. “I hated the musical,” the writer stated outright at the Television Critics Assn.’s winter press tour in February. “I just wanted to rescue this great book from [that] pathetic virago.”
Suffice it to say, his PBS Masterpiece version of “Les Misérables” does not wear its heart on its sleeve nearly as much as the musical’s bombastic numbers do. But Davies — whose considerable résumé includes adaptations of “Pride and Prejudice,” “Vanity Fair,” and “War and Peace” — nonetheless knows how to mine timeless emotion from tomes that many might dismiss as incurably dry.
This new version of “Les Misérables” comes to us in the form of a handsome, sweeping, straightforward series of six episodes. Davies and...
Suffice it to say, his PBS Masterpiece version of “Les Misérables” does not wear its heart on its sleeve nearly as much as the musical’s bombastic numbers do. But Davies — whose considerable résumé includes adaptations of “Pride and Prejudice,” “Vanity Fair,” and “War and Peace” — nonetheless knows how to mine timeless emotion from tomes that many might dismiss as incurably dry.
This new version of “Les Misérables” comes to us in the form of a handsome, sweeping, straightforward series of six episodes. Davies and...
- 4/9/2019
- by Caroline Framke
- Variety Film + TV
Producer Cameron Mackintosh planning to storm New York barricades with third run of stage musical after success of film
Les Misérables is heading back to Broadway, more than a decade after the original New York production closed its doors.
Following the success of Tom Hooper's film adaptation, producer Cameron Mackintosh revealed yesterday that he would take the 25th anniversary production of Les Misérables to New York in 2014. Neither dates nor a specific venue has been announced, but Mackintosh said the musical would play at a theatre owned by the Shubert Organisation.
It means a third New York outing for Alain Boublil, Jean-Marc Natel and Claude-Michel Schönberg's musical, which initially launched there in 1987, two years after the RSC's original production transferred to the West End. While the London show is still going strong, Les Misérables lasted 16 years on Broadway, closing in 2003.
However, it returned three years later – a move...
Les Misérables is heading back to Broadway, more than a decade after the original New York production closed its doors.
Following the success of Tom Hooper's film adaptation, producer Cameron Mackintosh revealed yesterday that he would take the 25th anniversary production of Les Misérables to New York in 2014. Neither dates nor a specific venue has been announced, but Mackintosh said the musical would play at a theatre owned by the Shubert Organisation.
It means a third New York outing for Alain Boublil, Jean-Marc Natel and Claude-Michel Schönberg's musical, which initially launched there in 1987, two years after the RSC's original production transferred to the West End. While the London show is still going strong, Les Misérables lasted 16 years on Broadway, closing in 2003.
However, it returned three years later – a move...
- 2/20/2013
- by Matt Trueman
- The Guardian - Film News
New York -- Someone is dreaming the dream: "Les Miserables" is coming back to Broadway.
Producer Cameron Mackintosh said Tuesday that the national tour of the epic musical about life in 19th-century France will make a stop on Broadway in March 2014 at a Shubert theater.
The move comes on the heels of the Oscar-nominated big screen adaptation directed by Tom Hooper and starring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway.
It will mark the third time the show has made it to Broadway. The original landed in 1987 and played 6,680 performances, ranking as the third-longest-running musical in Broadway history. A revival was mounted in 2006 but closed in 2008.
Mackintosh, who has also been involved in producing "The Phantom of the Opera," "Mary Poppins," "Miss Saigon" and "Cats," is betting that the appetite for "Les Miserables" will only be increased by the movie. History has shown he might be right: Film version of...
Producer Cameron Mackintosh said Tuesday that the national tour of the epic musical about life in 19th-century France will make a stop on Broadway in March 2014 at a Shubert theater.
The move comes on the heels of the Oscar-nominated big screen adaptation directed by Tom Hooper and starring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway.
It will mark the third time the show has made it to Broadway. The original landed in 1987 and played 6,680 performances, ranking as the third-longest-running musical in Broadway history. A revival was mounted in 2006 but closed in 2008.
Mackintosh, who has also been involved in producing "The Phantom of the Opera," "Mary Poppins," "Miss Saigon" and "Cats," is betting that the appetite for "Les Miserables" will only be increased by the movie. History has shown he might be right: Film version of...
- 2/19/2013
- by AP
- Huffington Post
Tom Hooper's gamble of filming Les Misérables with on-set singing has resulted in a work of unusual power and colour
Asked who was France's greatest poet, André Gide responded with the famously rueful answer: "Victor Hugo, hélas!" Cameron Mackintosh, the impresario who brought Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel's Les Misérables to London and transformed it into a worldwide phenomenon after its mild Parisian success and disastrous British first-night reception, would give a rather more positive response. I was in that first-night audience on 30 September 1985, and shared the general opinion that it was an indifferent show, shallow and somewhat forced in tone. I emerged with only one song planted in my head, Master of the House, sung by Alun Armstrong as Thénardier, the outrageously opportunist innkeeper, a number that struck me as rather like You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two from Oliver!
I wasn't writing about the...
Asked who was France's greatest poet, André Gide responded with the famously rueful answer: "Victor Hugo, hélas!" Cameron Mackintosh, the impresario who brought Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel's Les Misérables to London and transformed it into a worldwide phenomenon after its mild Parisian success and disastrous British first-night reception, would give a rather more positive response. I was in that first-night audience on 30 September 1985, and shared the general opinion that it was an indifferent show, shallow and somewhat forced in tone. I emerged with only one song planted in my head, Master of the House, sung by Alun Armstrong as Thénardier, the outrageously opportunist innkeeper, a number that struck me as rather like You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two from Oliver!
I wasn't writing about the...
- 1/13/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Christmas Day 2012 marks the biggest and best day of the year for many Broadway babies around the world, but the anticipatory fervor has little to do with the man with the beard in red and white from the North Pole - you see, the guy in question in this equation is more apt to be seen in red and black and his origins are decidedly a bit more Gallic than Jolly Old St. Nick. The man whom I speak of is, of course, Jean Valjean, the protagonist of Victor Hugo's spellbinding 1862 historical epic Les Miserables, a novel which was subsequently adapted into a 1980 concert spectacular and ultimately a 1985 full-fledged stage musical, painstakingly developed through the shepherding of uber producer Cameron Mackintosh, alongside the talents responsible for breathing song into the story - original French composerlyricist team Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil along with Jean-Marc Natel, to whom Mackintosh...
- 12/23/2012
- by Pat Cerasaro
- BroadwayWorld.com
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