Les Miserables - indeed

We were very grateful for the TicketMaster vouchers that my parents bought us… it meant that we could do no other than treat ourselves to a trip to the theatre… Adele fancied a musical... so we booked our seats for Les Mis. I had heard a lot about this production, it seems to be “the show” to see in the West End, or at least was at one time.

While Adele’s sister cuts Adele’s hair – and they have their girly chat – praise God for an upstairs - I’m free again to put thoughts to paper…

The show was great… but I went away with a niggle in my mind. How could the audience offer such rapturous applause? Don’t get me wrong – the production was excellent, and worthy of such applause… but had people lost the deeply depressing story that had ensued… had they forgotten that life is unfair – the man who spends twenty years on the chain-gang for stealing some bread for his starving family?

Had they forgotten about the respectable lady who had to become a prostitute in order to feed her child? Had they forgotten that the young idealistic students had all lost their lives at the barricade – for seemingly no reason at all? Had they forgotten the song of the women – where nothing ever changes, where we’re simply turning through the years… where minutes turn to hours and hours into years? Had they forgotten the song of Marius “empty chairs at empty tables, now my friends are dead and gone. Phantom faces at the window, phantom shadows on the floor. Empty chairs at empty tables, where my friends will sing no more”?

It was a hard to pill to swallow as I watched… and odd that the audience would applaud with such gusto with whistles and cheers at the depressing storyline. The audience was lost… oblivious to their own state; deaf to the story that spoke so loudly to their lives; blind to the fragility and ‘pointlessness’ of their lives as shown before them on the stage. That can be the only answer as to why they went out so happy and cheerful!

Praise God that according to His great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading!!!