angualupin:

laissezferre:

threadbaremillionaire:

Was it just me or were these lines cut from the current production? Someone with a better memory please reassure/confirm. Either way I felt like drawing it.

screeaaamss yes, the lyrics were cut back in 2000. combeferre used to sing his lines as he stopped the others from pointing their guns at javert, and grantaire was… somewhere

The score is also really interesting here:

The lines sung by Courfeyrac, Feuilly, and Bossuet, when threatening Javert (take the bastard now and shoot him/let us watch this devil dance/you would do the same Inspector/if we let you have your chance) are to a line of music that is elsewhere only seen in two places: it is usually sung by Javert when he is pronouncing judgment on other characters; for example, it is the tune to which I have heard such protestations/every day for twenty years/let’s have no more explanations/save your breath and save your tears is sung during Fantine’s Arrest. The only other time it is used is when Gavroche is mocking Javert. The musical cues, therefore, tell us that this action by the Amis (the desired shooting of Javert) is judgment and that is also wrong; the Amis are employing the same blind condemnation of others that makes Javert the villain.

In contrast, Combeferre’s response (though we may not all survive here/there are things that never die) is sung to the same tune as Fantine’s there’s a child that sorely needs me/please m’siuer she’s just that high, which tells us that Combeferre here is acting as the voice of compassion. It is, in essence, as much a plea for mercy as Fantine’s; more importantly, it’s a plea that must be headed if the moral rightness of the tale is to be followed. Javert, ignoring Fantine’s plea, was acting wrongly; the Amis, while they might have been wrong in their initial leap to take the bastard now and shoot him, respond to Combeferre’s plea in a way that Javert does not respond to Fantine’s, and thus, they ultimately choose the moral path. So by cutting this minute of run time, Cammack wasn’t only cutting a nice bit of Combeferre and Grantaire characterisation that Amis fans might miss, he was also cutting another lesson on judgement vs. mercy, which is ultimately the heart of the story.

(As for Grantaire’s following what’s the difference, die a policeman/die a schoolboy, die a spy, it’s harder for me to tell — I don’t have a copy of the original score, only the 2010 tour score, so I can’t do a bar-by-bar comparison — but I think it’s a unique line that is a play off the plea line but falls more emphatically, making it something like “a despairing plea”, which would fit for what Grantaire is trying to say. But I’d have to have the actual music in front of me to be sure.)

I’ve said it sixty-zillion times before and will say it again: the musical, with all its flaws (and they are many), is still the best adaptation that isn’t a 10+ hour miniseries not that that guarantees you’re a good adaptation, yes I’m looking at you Shoujo Cosette because you can communicate so much more in five minutes of song than you can in five minutes of dialogue. The kind of musical referencing seen here is just one example.

PS If you want to listen to the uncut version, see here, about 3:40 in. It’s the ‘99 London production, with JOJ as Valjean. The entire thing is worth a watch, and not only because it’s pre-cuts.