h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It makes such a pleasant change to read that someone agrees with me that both this book and muscial are splendidly touching, wrenching at the hearts of even the most cynical of observeers.

It gives me great pleasure to boast that I have recently converted a friend who swore that all musicals were 'lame', 'uninspiring' and 'pathetic when compared with Opera', by showing her a production of Les Mis... She wept! Though of course I cannot take credit for this myself - the music is awe inspring and epic, and as the 10 year anniversary production showed, the lyrics succeed amazingly even without the drama.

I am a big fan of VH and I have studied Les. Mis. in my french classes.
I like the musical performances
but I think that I like the non-musical versions better.
I am an actor and I usu. like musicals and don't get me wrong
I like this one too but I think that the essence of the play cannot be
shown very well in a musical format. :-þ

I personally feel that the musical captured the essence of the novel better than any of the movies (at least the movies in English). Due to the length of the novel, when making a movie (or the musical) something has to be cut out. Most of the movies I've seen have cut out, in my opinion, critical characters or events.

While I feel the musical is the best adaptation...I still feel it is quite necessary for a true admirer of the musical to pick up the book (unabridged) and read it. The only way they will ever do true justice to the work on screen is if someone tackles it in mini-series television fashion and spend several (at least 10) hours on it.

(I guess a five-part movie would also work spending 2 hours on each book in the novel)

(now for a bit of shameless self-promotion)
Visit http://www.gavroche.org/literature/vhugo for more information on Victor Hugo

visit http://www.h2g2.com/A157781 for the Victor Hugo entry as I am currently working on updating it, so therefore the link in this entry isn't to the most complete version.

*runs as fast as she can hoping that she's not -too- late*

First I submit my entry and when I finally find out it has been approved the conversations have already started weeks ago without me... *sigh*

I LOVE LES MIS!!

And Gavroche, now that you're here I'd like to tell you that some months ago (when I wrote this, actually) I did a paper of Hugo & Les Mis and your articles & pages were very helpful... Thanks!