How Do You Solve a Problem Like Rosemary's Baby?

I saw a touring production of the musical Les Miserables tonight at the National Theatre. I'd never seen it before, and I must say I enjoyed it much more than I expected to. I was actually quite moved by the end. It was worlds better than some touring productions I've seen, which often seem a little mechanical or low-rent. Some of the singing tonight was truly spectacular, particularly that of Randal Keith, who played Jean Valjean. He got a huge and well-deserved ovation after the beautiful, if sentimental, show-stopper "Bring Him Home." (It struck me while listening that that would be an appropriate anthem for the US troops in Iraq. Someone put together a year-end film montage and cue up the background music! There won't be a dry eye in the viewership, I promise.)

I have a conflicted relationship to musicals. I admit to a secret fascination with them but usually don't love them as much as I feel I'm supposed to (don't get me started about Sondheim). It's not because I have a problem with people breaking into song or dance -- if you're going to a musical for realism, you're so in the wrong place. I guess I have trouble with the unmerited bombast with which many of them are treated. Les Miz was certainly bombastic, but it worked. The story was so grand and mythic from the first note that the grandiosity seemed perfectly appropriate. The emotions were believably theatrical -- they made me feel as though my own emotions were theatrical, or could be; there's a bit of a thrill in that sensation.

This is the 40th anniversary of the movie The Sound of Music, by the way, and though I don't have it (yet), there's a special-edition DVD just out with all sorts of juicy-sounding extras, including actor recollections and a Mia Farrow screen test. That's one Maria who wouldn't last a day with those devilish Von Trapp kids!