Les Miserables

I’m 12 years old. It's 2012. My mother and I are in New York to see the sights and meet Hugh Jackman but before we can do that we are going to see my favorite musical. If I were to write about what Les Mis means to me, this would be a whole other piece. This is my first real Broadway musical (not on tour) and a moment I have been waiting for for years. We remain in line outside of the Imperial Theatre, and I am bouncing off of my toes in excitement. We finally are allowed inside and its different than I expected. Unlike at home the bathrooms and bar are inside the actual house. It's smaller than I thought it was too. We are close enough to see the whites of the performers eyes from our third-row seat. The actor who plays Jean Valjean made direct eye contact with me twice (making my 12-year old self-swoon). The man behind me is telling his wife that he’s seen the movie twice. I have him beat there: this will be my second time seeing the show live. No one knows how many times I’ve seen the movie. The overture starts and tears immediately begin flowing down my face. I might not know what it’s like to have a child out of wedlock in 18th century France or die for love on a barricade, but I know what it’s like to be the underdog. I know what it’s like to fight for what you believe in or have to stand up for yourself when no one else will. “Even the darkest night will end, and the sun will rise” the chorus sings at the end of the show. I start to see the light at the end of the tunnel clearer then I did before.

The Great Comet

I’m 15 years old (16 in 3 days). It’s 2016. This time my mom and I are in the city with old family friends for our 16th birthdays. We find ourselves back at the Imperial to see Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812. While Les Mis irrevocably changed my life, The Great Comet’s Natasha is the most I have ever related to a character. We have found ourselves in eerily similar positions and I don’t know if I would have gotten through my sophomore year without this show to help me see that I am not alone. My selling point to our friends was the Josh Groban was in the show, and no one is going to pass down an opportunity to see him perform (2 weeks before Tony nominations no less). “I’m going to cry,” I said to my mom as I did my makeup before we left the hotel “The music is going to start and I am going to lose it.” I am wrong. It takes the whole first act and most of the second before I start shedding tears. “Did you love, did you love that bad man?” Pierre sings to Natasha in the aftermath of her destruction by a man who used her as a pawn, who took her life and left for a new one. I feel choked up as Natasha snaps back that she doesn’t know at all but begs Pierre not to call him bad. I don’t full on cry, not like Les Mis, but there is a lump in my throat, and as Pierre goes out into the snow, speaking of how Natasha deserves love after all that has happened and how her life is only starting, I begin to feel that mine is too.

Carousel

Now it’s 2018. I’m in the city with my dad on the last minute work trip that he invited me along on. One of the few perks of online school is being able to do things like this. Things like see the second preview of the Carousel revival on Broadway. It’s a last minute decision. Carousel is not one of my favorite shows, but the cast makes up for it. We go to the box office after lunch at my favorite diner and buy tickets for the performance. I’ve seen Carousel before, but it means something else now. I understand Julie Jordan more now, understand how easy it would be to fall into someone like Billy Bigelow's trap (I didn’t, but I came close enough to taste that destruction, see how my life could have been). Billy asks Julie to go dancing with him, and I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. He reaches over to hold her hand during the famous bench scene and clench my own hands into a fist. I’m protective of this girl because I understand this girl. I don’t cry though until Julie’s act 2 song “What’s the Use in Wonderin’?” Julie sings about knowing that someone is a  bad person but making excuses for them, something I have done with a great many people. She’s stuck in this relationship. When Billy kills himself a song or two later, her best friend Carrie tells her that she might be better off without him. I don’t think that’s true. I think she would have been best off if she never met him. Julie had a very clear intentions about what she wanted her life to be. She sings “I’m never going to marry” to Billy upon their first meeting, but after she loses her job and her reputation over him, that is off the table. We never get to know what would have happened if Julie had gotten the life she wanted because she never gets to live the life she wanted. We leave Julie alone with a child and the scars the relationship left. Carousel isn’t tragic because Billy dies and Julie loses her love. It’s tragic because Julie loses herself. I leave the theatre with a new understanding.