My daughter Grace has the acting bug. And I believe most musical actors are enthralled with Les Misérables. She tried out this spring, and although she didn't get a big role, she decided to continue with it, just thrilled to be part of the production. Her main role is as one of the barricade students whose boyfriend goes to fight, but she also gets to be a whore in the scene with Fantine and Woman #6 in a solo singing role.
At the end of the show, she was in tears from the sheer joy and emotion of the show. Here she is right afterwards, still wiping away tears.
The show went off with only a small hitch. In the whore scene, a banging off stage ended up with the women kind of standing around for a few minutes, still in character, but unsure what to do.
It turns out the conductor fainted. He had been going through cancer treatment and a stand-in conductor continued the show.
It could have been a little uncomfortable for us, Grace's parents, to watch her portraying a whore, but Earl jumped right into the stream of things and leaned over to me to whisper, "Hey! Grace got a client!" as she walked off stage with one man only to return a few minutes later and be taken off stage by another.
Grace was enchanted by the 10-year-old playing Gavrotte. He's a heckuva singer and actor and has quite the good cockney accent for an American.
And here are Grace and her friend Carmen dressed as whores. No wonder they were getting all the business on stage.
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