"Les Miserables" on West End?

Ever since seeing the trailer for Tom Hooper's Les Miserables, I was interested in learning more about the story. The story takes place in post-revolutionary France, and is written by Victor Hugo, who also wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame. There was no modern musical film version to my knowledge of the story, so I decided to watch Liam Neeson's role as Jean Valjean in Les Miserables from 1998. The film, as you can see from my prior review, was very good. One thing that stood out to me was your Javert's strength as the character. He wasn't necessarily evil, he was just Ana bound to the law trying to enforce the law, and could not take the fact that one man avoided him all this time, no matter how petty the crime. While watching the movie, and the trailer, I was thinking to myself "wouldn't it be nice if I could've seen the musical?"

Unfortunately the musical was not around on Broadway. But I was planning to go to London for the Olympics. I was thinking of seeing a West End show, but then I figured no show would be worth it since Broadway was right next to at home. However, yesterday I decided to do a little browsing and see if there were any shows worth watching, and after perusing a list of shows including The Lion King, Les Miserables popped up. After a bit more research it seems like this is the longest running musical on West End, and according to sources maybe the longest-running musical in the world, although that seems to go to Phantom of the Opera.


I decided to book tickets for Les Miserables, seeing as the story was so good. I really love the song "I Dreamed a Dream," such a beautiful, haunting, and sad song, so I bought tickets to the show and I'm excited to hopefully get to see the musical in the place where it was popularized, even though it started in France. I am glad to hopefully get to see it where it really became popular became a hit before the film comes out, and get to experience a chance of West End history.