ng company productions of Les Miserables and Rent.
Les Miserables is indeed a story about the misery that attended the lives of so many people in the first part of the 19th century in Paris, creating an entire class of people who were defined by their outcast state. Because most American audience members of the play will have only a fairly foggy grasp of French history during this period - it is in fact fairly labyrinthine - it is essential for the director of the show to help the audience feel a connection to the characters that is distinct from any sense of historical accuracy. In part, this connection - this sense of sympathy for the characters that the audience must feel for the play to succeed - is accomplished on the strength of Victor Hugo's plot, on the terrible burdens that he has given his characters to play.
But the director has a number of choices to make in creating characters who appeal to us while also conveying to us the terrible conditions of their lives. This is done most realistically in the play in terms of the costuming: Although at some level we know that the "rags" that many of the characters are wearing have been intentionally and elaborately distressed by the costume staff, and while we may at some level noticed that all of the homeless and wretched of Paris have managed to find rags that are all drawn from the same corner of the spectrum, we accept that these are "real" rags. And because of our sense of who must dress in such fragments we also accept that these are truly poor people.
Of course, if we step back and examine the scene more closely even for a moment we would immediately reject this initial assessment of ours. Certainly the clothes are realistic, but many other elements of the way that the cast members look are not realistic. These people, for beginners, are all much too well fed. Not that the stage is filled with obese actors, but these people look fundamentally healthy. We are so accustom...