Beyond the Barricade

Yesterday we went to Norwich to watch ‘Les Misérables’. In celebration of forty years of the show, amateur groups are performing it for the first time. NNOS (Norfolk and Norwich Operatic Society), in collaboration with other local theatre groups, is one of just eleven companies, across the country, to be granted permission.

We thoroughly enjoyed the evening. It’s a show we know well. The soloists were excellent, the staging creative, the whole production really well put together.

Based on the Victor Hugo novel, set against the backdrop of 19th-century France, Les Misérables tells the story of Jean Valjean…  

It’s 1832 Paris. Many are poor ‘misérables’; politically minded students, planning a revolution, sing the anthem:

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again

When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Then join in the fight
That will give you the right to be free

They’re dreaming of a better world of justice and freedom, where the poor are no longer the victims. It’s out of reach now, but it’s there – ‘beyond the barricade’

They build the barricade. Students and citizens take on the authorities. They’re killed. Their efforts have failed, their dreams destroyed.

As the story reaches its conclusion we see justice and compassion. Revolutionary student Marius and misérable Cosette find love and Jean Valjean finds redemption.

The show ends with the same anthem. ‘Beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see…?’ The show’s answer to the question is that beyond the barricade created by war and conflict, there’s a new world of peace, mercy, salvation and forgiveness. As the dying Valjean sings: ‘To love another person is to see the face of God.’