And I cried buckets at Les Miserables

Can any girl watch Les Miserables without shedding a tear?

She must be one very tough lady.

When I watched Les Mis recently at the movies, I was pretty sure that all females left the theatre with wet tissues in their hands. As for me, I was a total disgrace, I basically started bawling my eyes out at the moment Fantine sang I Dreamed A Dream until to the end of the movie.

And the movie was my third time watching Les Mis.

Les Miserables was my very first musical in my life. I remembered I was in secondary 3 when I watched the Australian cast at Kallang Theater. It was a school trip and I caught it with my classmates on a matinee. All of us were so excited and even though our seats were so very far away from the stage, we were totally spellbound by the moving storyline, the wonderful score and the fantastic stage setup . Les Mis had set the bar high. To date, it has remained to be my all time favorite musical at all time.

I remembered that I did not fully understand the storyline and at times, I was confused with the various characters. Well... some of them did look the same when I was like 5 km away from the stage. And it didn't help that there wasn't any subtitles, so half the time, I didn't understand what the performers were singing about.

Nonetheless, I still cried buckets when everyone died in the end. Well... almost everyone except for lucky Corsette and Marius.

At 15 years old, I told myself that I MUST watch Les Miserables again and I would pay for the best seats that I could afford.

And I did.

I watched Les Mis again in 2001 when I visited Hub in London. And this time round, I paid a grand total of 50 pounds (which was a lot of money as I was still a poor student and the exchange rate was S$3 to a Pound) for a matinee show. But I had a really good seat, I was seated on the 5th row from the stage and I could see the expressions of the actors/actresses, I could feel the live music in my ears and felt as if I was acting in the musical!

And for the second time, I cried buckets while watching the show. The funniest thing was that I watched the musical alone and there was this another young lady (most likely a tourist) who also came alone. So the both of us were sharing tissues, snorting loudly and basically bawling our eyes out. It was as if we knew Fantine or Eponie personally or something. When the curtain finally closed and after all the encores, my "crying partner" turned to me and gave me a little hug. "What a musical!" she said. And all I could do was to nod my head.

And so, at the recent movie, my third time watching Les Mis, I was still very moved by the sad story and songs. The singings could be better but most of the casts were Hollywood actors and actresses, and for that, it was very good effort already.

Ahh... if I had the chance, I would definitely catch Les Miserables Live once again!