Here's to you and here's to them
People who know me on Social Media will have heard I'm researching for some possible articles for Media Magazine. I also seem to have fallen rather badly back down the rabbit hole into Les Miserables fandom. I am running hard to catch up with 30 years of fan, cast, performance, technology and (most importantly) libretto changes.
I'm taking time out get this typed up for my own sanity. I can sing several different versions of lyrics that no-longer exist, and so many lines have been changed or dropped since it opened (and in the versions they are singing now) I could go really mad having them all running around in my head. To explain my history with the words from the show, fan friends and I originally collected them with help from the cast and recordings we got in various ways. I typed it out six months in advance of it officially being published, something which we were very proud of. Then I had to hand annotate after the Broadway changes came to us in 1987 and a fair chunk was changed.
That hard copy got lost during in the last 30 years through various house moves and floods / mouse attacks etc. Thank Goddess for YouTube and those naughty people who've recorded in theatres and have posted their collections over the years. I am NOT handling the 2012 film version (yet) as that is a very much cut and rewritten version which I will have to rant about in another post.
Today (as it's really nasty weather outside) I'm working on the Love Montage at the end of Act One. It's complicated enough in that I had thought there were three versions of this to track down but seemingly I am wrong. I have located another version that pre-dates Broadway and must be the tidied up version we heard at the Palace. Wish me luck and I'll see you at the other side.
I'm taking time out get this typed up for my own sanity. I can sing several different versions of lyrics that no-longer exist, and so many lines have been changed or dropped since it opened (and in the versions they are singing now) I could go really mad having them all running around in my head. To explain my history with the words from the show, fan friends and I originally collected them with help from the cast and recordings we got in various ways. I typed it out six months in advance of it officially being published, something which we were very proud of. Then I had to hand annotate after the Broadway changes came to us in 1987 and a fair chunk was changed.
That hard copy got lost during in the last 30 years through various house moves and floods / mouse attacks etc. Thank Goddess for YouTube and those naughty people who've recorded in theatres and have posted their collections over the years. I am NOT handling the 2012 film version (yet) as that is a very much cut and rewritten version which I will have to rant about in another post.
Today (as it's really nasty weather outside) I'm working on the Love Montage at the end of Act One. It's complicated enough in that I had thought there were three versions of this to track down but seemingly I am wrong. I have located another version that pre-dates Broadway and must be the tidied up version we heard at the Palace. Wish me luck and I'll see you at the other side.