'Mizzies' ready to pack Pioneer
Local production of the hit musical is breaking box-office records even before it opens
Article Last Updated: 04/25/2007 07:57:02 AM MDT
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Kenzie Stinger poses for her mother to take a photo before a... (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )
Sarah Pendelton is counting the hours until this weekend, when she will see her first full-length, professional show of the supermusical "Les Misérables."
It's not like the 18-year-old is expecting any narrative surprises, having seen the streamlined high school version of "Les Miz" 15 times, even singing in Art City Playhouse's show last summer. '' 'Les Miz' has become such a part of my life that I don't even realize when I'm thinking about it anymore. It's just there, part of me as much as breathing," said the Timpview High School senior, who got hooked while reading an abridged version of Victor Hugo's literary classic in her honors English class three years ago.
On Friday, in a national theatrical event, Pioneer Theatre Company opens the country's first regional production of the Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg classic. The Salt Lake City company is the first of only eight professional troupes, including southern Utah's Tuacahn Amphitheatre, granted rights to produce the spectacle-sized show in the next year.
Like Deadheads who traveled the country following the Grateful Dead to each concert, obsessive "Les Miz" fans - who refer to themselves on Internet message boards as "Mizzies" - have made plans. Pendelton will attend the show with her grandmother and several friends. "Only four times," is how the Provo teenager tells it, "and I hope that'll be enough."
Judee Rodriguez, 48, of Sugar House, has purchased two sets of tickets and a Rush pass for $99, which gives her dibs on any unclaimed tickets if she shows up at the box office an hour before performances. She's already seen the show three times: twice when national tours played Salt Lake City and once on a London trip. "I cry every time I go," said Rodriguez, who credits her French ancestry for some of the story's resonance. "There's something about the story and music that just grabs me."
The longest-running musical in London theatrical history - 21 years and counting - is popular everywhere, of course, but Utahns demonstrate a seemingly insatiable appetite for the epic story of love, revolution and redemption set in 19th century France.
"Les Miz" set per capita sales records during eight national tours from 1991 to 2003 presented by Broadway Across America - Utah. Since rights to a condensed version were first released in 2002, Utahns have also supported 27 high school productions.
Despite that saturation, the demand for tickets to Pioneer's local production has caused an unprecedented five "held over" announcements - before the show has even opened. The state's largest professional company has sold 55,000 tickets to the planned 67-performance run of "Les Miz." That's more than double the 24,237 tickets sold to the 27 shows during the 2004 run of "Beauty and the Beast," previously the company's best-selling run, according to managing director Chris Lino.
The sweeping story of how ex-convict Jean Valjean regains his honor has been packing an emotional wallop since Hugo's novel was published in 1862. The story tracks Valjean as he takes on a new identity, adopts a prostitute's child and gets swept up in the era's Revolutionary movement, all the while outrunning his nemesis, Javert, a determined police inspector.
Yet Hugo's story seems to hold special moral weight for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Jana Riess, co-author of 2005's Mormonism for Dummies, underscores the power of Hugo's novel this way: A quick search on the LDS.org Web site turns up 27 citations in recent addressees and articles by church leaders. "For Mormons, to be hearing a novel quoted during General Conference is about as close as you can get to an imprimatur," Riess said.
The musical is centered on the Christian theme of redemption, and the Valjean character is depicted as more noble than in Hugo's novel.
"The musical has a much more romantic notion of human nature, and that's very consistent with the Mormon theology that tends to think of the elevation of the human soul," she said.
"Les Miz" has tremendous cultural cachet among Mormons, as if it had received a "wholesome entertainment stamp of approval," said Eric Samuelsen, a Provo playwright and theater professor at Brigham Young University. Even conservative LDS theatergoers seem undeterred by such slightly naughty bits as "Lovely Ladies," set in a whorehouse. Beyond the story's name-brand, rock-band-sized cultural recognition, it's set in the early 19th century, the same time period in which Joseph Smith founded the Mormon faith in upstate New York. "Mormons don't mind melodrama, and we like that period - that's where we come from," Samuelsen said. "It's about a basically decent guy who is unfairly persecuted who prays and his prayers are answered. That's a narrative with a lot of power in our culture."
The promise of the local production isn't felt just among Mormons and Mizzies, but seems to be affecting the professionals, longtime theater producers and the 36-member cast, which includes veterans of Broadway and touring shows, as well as a handful of Utah-based Equity actors. There were wet eyes all around in the rehearsal room during the first sing-through of the stirring score, a rare occurrence, according to Pioneer's artistic director Charles Morey.
"It's a terrific, terrific piece of theater," said Morey, who is directing the $1 million production. "It's a wonderful story, so rich, and to use a word I usually loath, it is truly uplifting. It's about grace and about the power of the human spirit to transcend."
