When little Gavroche sneaks out of the barricade to steal ammunition from fallen French troops, his action is heroic and not foolhearty only if the pouch he fills makes its way back to the rebels. Throwing it in a hook shot to stage right is not incredibly helpful when the barricade is directly upstage. Poor kid tried, but he was just way, way off.

Best cover of the evening — a rebel accidentally knocks over some cups from a table, and they have to get off the floor before the scene change otherwise someone is going to trip and get killed, so one rebel grabs two of the glasses and continues on, and another rebel comes from the other side of the stage during the song, picks up the remaining glass, and toasts with it. He may have even taken a drink. From an empty glass that fell on the ground. Just like real life.

Little Cosette was tiny and adorable.

When big Cosette sang “can people really fall in love so fast?” I turned to Shaina and (a little too loudly) whispered, “no!”. Jessica, on the other side of me, started laughing, and I think I might have upset the people behind us.

Why does every single Javert have to sing in that silly monotone? It is really annoying, and its got to be hard for people who don’t know the words to understand him.

Jean val Jean lifting the ox cart is supposed to be a major and pivotal point in the story. It sets up his next conversation with Javert and leads to him exposing himself as the escaped convict that he is, messing up his entire life. And yet, this val Jean just went over, lifted the cart with the tiniest effort, and then handed it off to some other guy to hold up while he went and cared for the man trapped underneath. It was pathetic, and I just had to laugh out loud at the absurdity of it. Someone, possibly the director, should be shot.

I’ve now seen Les Mis three times professionally (Ahmanson, Broadway, Pantageus) and the high school version (at Fullerton College) once. I feel pretty well versed in it. I think the only other show I have seen more than once is Ragtime, which I saw on Broadway and at the Performing Arts Center. Oh, and also Avenue Q twice on Broadway. I really want to see Wicked again. Oh, yeah, and I saw Rent both on Broadway and at The Grove in Orange. Wow, I’ve seen a lot of shows a lot of times! With both Les Mis and Rent, the Broadway version was pretty inferior to the touring version. Not sure why that is. Maybe being on the road keeps it from being routine.

Oh, one final note. This time, the slow motion battle scenes and Javert’s suicide and such just looked really, really funny. Not to mention all of the extraneous turntable use. I guess I just hadn’t realized before how funny that all is.