Les Miserables

The Academy @CAST clearly enjoy a challenge.  Having successfully produced We will Rock you and High School Musical in recent years with their core young people they boldly and ambitiously decided to cast the school’s edition of Les Misérables and welcomed eleven new young people to join, to make a cast of twenty-two.  This extraordinary sung through powerful and emotional tale was certain to stretch the young cast of under eighteen-year-olds as well as the creative team who produced it.  The show is a remarkable achievement with the cast throughout the show, bringing all the power and emotion of the story to their portrayals and successfully creating the characters that have become so familiar to regular musical theatre goers.

Simply staged with wardrobe rails doubling up as the barricades and projected words setting the location and the date, the production was fluidly set so scenes flowed into each other smoothly to sustain the pace and audience engagement.  There was an excellent use of the stage space and auditorium entrances to vary the look of scenes and a perfect lighting plot to illuminate the performers.

Of course, the real challenge for the performers is the singing along to the rights holder supplied tracks and it was very impressive to hear the cast take on the challenge with were some exceptionally good performances.

The result is a production that everybody connected with this community can be immensely proud of and it is to be hoped that many of the young stars will stay on to develop their abilities in future shows. 

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