Jimu News Chief Reporter Zhang Cong
Correspondent Xia Chen
How can the creators of
show the fate of the characters contained in the million words of Victor Hugo's masterpiece "Les Misérables" in three and a half hours?
This is the question in the hearts of almost all the audiences who are about to enter the theater to watch the stage play "Les Misérables". At 23:00 on the evening of April 28, many people who walked out of the Wuhan Theater after watching the performance had already got the answer.
Whether it is the novel written by the literary giant Hugo, or the English version of the musical that premiered in London in 1985 and later became famous on Broadway, or the 2012 movie starring Hugh Jackman, "Les Misérables" and The story of Jean Valjean can always quickly capture people's hearts in various forms.
When the Chinese version of the stage play was announced to be starring Liu Ye, many viewers were very excited - you know, this is Liu Ye's first appearance on the stage after 14 years after Meng Jinghui's "Amber" in 2010. How will the "Best Actor" who has won many major film awards such as Golden Horse, Golden Rooster, Huabiao, and Golden Goblet present such a complex and profound character as Jean Valjean on a small stage?
Putting aside everything else, Liu Ye read 8 pages of lines as soon as he came on stage!
The biggest feature of the stage play "Les Misérables" is the large number of lines. This is obviously a different way for the stage play to interpret the original work of "Les Misérables".
director Jean Bellolini obviously chose a relatively niche performance method - the actors are not only the characters in the play, but also the storytellers of the background and story of the times. Audiences who have watched the first show in Beijing before Mentioned, "I basically listened to Hugo's original work on site."
Yes, at the performance on the 29th, Jimu News reporters watched the play with thousands of spectators present. The reporter found that the stage play "Les Misérables" did not streamline the plot or reconstruct the character dialogue like traditional film and television works. To restore the story line of the original work, it instead spliced different fragments of the original work, and all the lines in the play come from Hugo's original text.
Therefore, long lines are definitely the ultimate test of an actor's skills, especially Liu Ye, who plays Jean Valjean, who spends almost 80% of the time reading his lines. In particular, the eight-page line at the beginning, which was described as "airtight" by the audience, won live applause from many viewers and thumbs-up posted on social platforms.
is both a character and a storyteller. This seamless switching performance not only requires the actor's extreme immersion in the role, but also tests the audience's acceptance.
Jimu News reporter found that the evaluation of "Les Misérables" is indeed polarized. In an interview, senior theater audience "Skirt" said that she quite likes this performance mode. "I personally feel that it is pretty good. After all, everyone is familiar with the story of "Les Misérables". If we can present the characters of Jean Valjean and other protagonists step by step, "Tragedy of Fate, I don't think it's novel enough." Many viewers also bluntly said that they were not used to this kind of performance, "This is a large-scale storytelling scene. Although I had been mentally prepared before, I still felt a little bit accepting when I came to the scene. No."
However, almost all the audience felt the "beauty" from the stage of "Les Misérables". The falling snow, dancing rose petals, melodious and soft music, and the disks of twinkling stars are both abstract beauty and concrete cruelty.
(The picture is the official still of "Les Misérables")
(Source: Jimu News)
