Reflections on Les Misérbles (from someone

who did his best not to see it for over twenty years)

Published in Christianity and Theatre. Fall/Winter (2005) 2-5.

by Robert Hubbard

Sometimes I can be a real snob.

Until very recently, I had never seen a production of Les Misérables. This glaring omission from my theatre-attendance resume came as no easy feat. Over the past two decades I took multiple theatre trips to New York City, but never bought a ticket. Closer to home, a succession of vans and buses jammed full of my friends and fellow theatre aficionados commuted to the literally dozens of Broadway touring shows, but I never rode along. In the past seven years, I attended over thirty different productions on two separate trips to London, but never saw fit to stand in the half-price ticket-line in Leister Square for a pass to Victor Hugo’s Romantic tale. At a plethora of work-calls and cast parties I listened to an uncountable number of boom-boxes blare Claude-Michel Schonberg and Herbert Kretzmer’s famous score, but I never listened all that closely.

Why?

As I attempt to psychoanalyze my avoidance of one of the most beloved and successful musicals of all time, I diagnose two possible causes. First, I often think musicals are cheesy. There… I said it. It’s out in the open. We can move forward. A New Yorker cartoon comes close to expressing my gut reaction to most musicals. The strip depicts an anxious stage-manager stepping out from behind a closed curtain. Addressing a waiting theatre audience, he states, “Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that tonight’s performance has been cancelled because the cast has decided that musicals are stupid.” Yes, I understand the historical and cultural importance of the musical form. I appreciate their sensory power. I marvel and the skills necessary to write, perform, and direct good musical theatre. Nonetheless, for whatever reasons, I generally fail to succumb to the spell.

My second excuse for systematically bypassing Les Misérable for twenty years reeks of high-culture snobbery and therefore troubles me more. I wondered how good the show could really be if everyone loves it so much. If something is really popular, it often means that it must not be very good. Right? I’m a professor of theatre with appropriately cultivated tastes. If I must see a musical, why not see something edgy or counter-cultural? On my last trip to New York City, I gladly dropped down $70 a ticket to see the fringe-originated musical Urinetown, but I maintained my spotless streak of avoiding Les Misérable. In my defense, experience often supports this prejudice. The Chicago production of Phantom of the Opera, the highest grossing musical of all time, bored me so much that I fell asleep. I suffer through blockbuster films like Titanic. I hate how pretentious this all sounds, but, if honesty prevails, I must admit that, for years, I considered Les Misérable as somehow beneath me.

Sometimes I can be a real snob.

The famous evangelist Tony Campolo spoke at chapel a few months back at the small Christian liberal arts college that employs me. I knew that I should go, but a stack of un-graded speech critiques had taken root my desk, and dozens of unanswered emails plagued my computer screen. I recalled listening to some recordings of Campolo at a college bible study back in 1980s. In full rationalization mode, my inner-monologue churned, “Yeah, he’s good, but this fiery, funny evangelist clearly appeals a younger crowd. I don’t need to be or evangelized to, shouted at, or dazzled. Give me my theology without the jokes and body blows; I can take it.” Still, I managed to break free of my desk, muttering all the way to the pew about hours in the day.

Suffice to say, my snobbery took a hit that Tuesday morning. Along with about twelve hundred others, I stumbled out of Christ Chapel challenged, scolded, and convicted. In the course of about forty-five minutes, Campolo brought to slaughter many sacred cows within the conservative Christian community where I live. Among others, he challenged the theology of a democracy founded on materialism, homophobia masked as family values, and capitol punishment disguised as Christian justice. Amidst these theological depth charges, Campolo surprised me the most when he revealed to his audience where he finds his inspiration. The following is a transcription of one small portion of the Chapel address.

“Church doesn’t do much for me anymore.  Everybody is in love with Jesus, and that’s beautiful, but if love for Jesus doesn’t translate into love for other people, it’s not valid.  It’s not valid. ‘If any man says that he loves me, and doesn’t love his neighbor, then that man is a lair, and the truth is not in him.’  That comes straight out of the Bible, you know.  I don’t want to know about your love for Jesus unless it translates into love for other people. When I need inspiration, I go to the theatre.”

Wow.

Vindicated, reinforced, and justified, I leaned forward, anticipating the productions that inspired Campolo to do the Lord’s work. What masterpieces would he name? What grace packed drama would he unpack? Campolo continued:

“When I go to the theatre, and I see something like Les Misérable, and I say, that song ought to be in the church.  That closing song, if you went to the musical, that song ought to be in the church.  As the revolutionaries come back from the grave and sing to the audience about a new world, the new world that ought to be.  I can still hear them singing. ‘ Who will be brave and stand with me, who will join in our crusade, for beyond the barricades, is the world you wish would be.  Can’t you hear them beat the drums?  Can’t you hear them sing the song?  It’s the future that they bring when tomorrow comes.’”

Arrghhh. I had heard this song many times, but only a recording. . . never in context.

A couple of months later, my wife and I sit in the mezzanine of the beautifully restored opera house in Sioux City, Iowa listening to the orchestra work through a familiar overture. Also a theatre professor, my wife serves as my Sherpa through the experience, comparing and contrasting this touring production of Les Misérable with the two others she has witnessed over the years. Humbled into maintaining an open mind, I listen and watch closely.

The show is fantastic. I love it. I form this response despite of the fact that it exhibits many of the typical elements of musical theatre that generally drive me nuts: a sprawling plot loaded with unlikely coincidences; a death that, as nearly as I can tell, goes completely unexplained; some lyrics that sound as if they come from a rhyming dictionary. Still, these snippy concerns fail to steal my joy this time around. Campolo’s observations hold true. Although much more may be said of it, Les Misérable functions as poignant illustration of depravity of human beings juxtaposed against the promise of the Kingdom. Campolo’s right: we should sing the final song in church!

I may be so bold as to add a bit to Campolo’s testimony. Who’s to say that we don’t sing the reprise from Les Misérable in church? I guess it depends on your definition of church. In their popular textbook, Living Theatre: A History, Edwin Wilson and Alvin Goldfarb argue that an essential difference between theatre and religion is “the efficacious nature of a religious ceremony.” I strongly resist this pervasive yet seemingly random distinction between what constitutes theatre and worship. People attend the theatre for many reasons, many of them “efficacious” in nature. Personally, I go to be transformed, to be edified, and to grow closer to my Creator. I attend church for roughly the same reasons. The physical building of a church cannot contain God’s grace any more that the beautifully restored opera house can exclude it. Certainly we should, with Campolo, lament that the church sometimes fails to translate its love for Jesus into love for other people. Conversely, we should rejoice on those rare occasions when the theatre succeeds where the church fails.

For two decades, my lack of enthusiasm for musical theatre prevented me from sharing the transformative religious experience contained within Le Miserables. While I do not pretend to have suddenly developed a love for the genre, I pray that this humbling experience will increase my capacity to practice what I already knew to be true, to seek-out and witness the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ in all things… even musicals.

Robert Hubbard is an associate professor of theatre and speech at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa.