Drama department plans to start ‘Les Miserables’ after ‘Much Ado’

“Lord, I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face: I had rather lie in the woollen,” says senior Annelise Nussbacher in character. She looks down from the McAfee Center stage to her large audience and pauses for comic relief as the crowd bursts into laughter, then continues her monologue.

The drama department performed “Much Ado About Nothing” by William Shakespeare on Oct. 19, 20, 25, 26 and 27.

“The actors were great with their hilarious lines and facial expressions,” junior Meeta Marathe said. “I likes how the added music flowed the scenes together, and the set was really beautiful.”

Now with two successful productions under its belt for the 2013-2014 school year, drama is beginning to plan for its next mainstage production, the spring musical. Drama teacher Sarah Thermond, after putting much thought into her decision, has chosen “Les Miserables,” originally by Victor Hugo, as this year’s spring musical.

“Since I knew we were going to get two weekends for the first time for both of the shows, I wanted to do shows that could be really grand and successful and appealing to the community and also to a lot of students involved,” Thermond said.

Thermond said she has had success in the past with students joining the drama department in their later years of high school, but still being successful.

“I wanted to do something that would accommodate students who are interested and have enough parts so that they all feel like they had a really meaningful contribution,” Thermond said.

Set around a decade following the French Revolution, “Les Miserables” is a musical that follows the story of a few common people desperate to take back their country. War, love, death, revolution, sadness and joy intertwine to create a tale of factory workers, schoolboys, and a parole escapee desperate for a chance at redemption.

“Les Miserables” traditionally requires a large cast, but Thermond expects that she will not have a problem filling all of the roles.

“It’s a really popular musical right now that is in a lot of people’s cultural memories,” Thermond said. “It has a lot of themes a lot of people are already thinking about because it’s been such a big phenomenon recently.”

Many students who are already familiar with the show are ecstatic with Thermond’s choice.

“I have been dying to do ‘Les Miserables’ ever since I first saw it when I was little,” junior Natalie Miller said. “Now I have the opportunity to actually be in it which is like a dream come true.”

However, because this musical is in such a high demand right now, Thermond had some difficulty securing the rights to produce this production.

“I applied to the rights in July, but we experienced some difficulty because they initially turned us down, saying that there were too many other productions of “Les Miserables” in the area,” Thermond said.

After doing some searching and finding out that there was only one other major production of the show in this area that was extremely successful, Thermond persisted and convinced MTI, the Musical Theater International company, to change its position

“There’s a reason it’s so popular,” Thermond said. “It has wonderful characters, beautiful music and some really lovely and beautiful messages at the heart of it that are very much rooted to the book that Victor Hugo wrote centuries ago.”

Even though this is an ambitious production, Thermond is confident that the both the student actors and technical crew will be able to rise to the challenge.

“What I found about working with students is that when you pick a show that they know is a challenge, and that they know is not something every high school can produce, it actually tends to get the students more invigorated and they attack it with even more zeal and work even harder at it,” Thermond said.