JUNE 17-21
The epic story that changes how you see the world. Prepare to be swept away by one of the most powerful musicals ever written. Les Misérables is an emotional journey through love, sacrifice, redemption, and the unbreakable human spirit. Les Mis is the show that reminds us why we need art, why we need each other, and why hope can never truly die. “Do you hear the people sing?” – and will you join them?
ASL provided, Saturday, September 12th @ 2:00pm.
“I Dreamed a Dream.” “Bring Him Home.” “Do You Hear the People Sing?” They are part of the permanent soundtrack of musical theatre — the ones you hum without quite knowing why, the ones that seem to carry more weight than a song reasonably should.
What you may not know, until you’re sitting in the dark watching it happen live, is why.
Les Misérables is the story of Jean Valjean — a man released from nineteen years in prison for stealing bread and forced, by a world with no patience for second chances, to spend decades running from the law, from his past, and from the version of himself he was told he would always be. It is the story of Fantine, who gives everything she has for a daughter she can barely reach. Of Éponine, who loves someone who will never love her back, and chooses to stay anyway. Of students at a barricade who believe, against all evidence, that the world can be made better — and who are willing to pay whatever that costs.
This is not a light evening. It was never meant to be.
There is a reason this show has run, somewhere in the world, almost without interruption since 1980. Part of it is the spectacle — the barricade that rises from nothing, the weight of a full company in full voice, a score so physically present in a live space that you feel it before you consciously hear it. Les Misérables is, by any measure, one of the grandest theatrical events in the canon. The production that comes to Wichita this September will fill Century II with sound and light and movement on a scale that is simply not possible anywhere but a stage.
But that is not, finally, why people come back.
What Les Misérables offers is something the lighter evenings cannot: the rare and genuine experience of being moved all the way through. Not just touched. Not just impressed. Moved — in the way that makes you sit very still in your seat afterward, not quite ready to stand up and go back into the world, because something in you has shifted and you’re not entirely sure yet what it is.
The questions at the heart of this story — What does a person owe to another person? What does it cost to be merciful? What do we do with the damage the world does to us? — are not questions from 19th-century France. They are questions from wherever you are sitting right now.
Seen the film? Heard the cast recording? Neither is the same as this. The full score played live by a full orchestra, in a hall built for exactly this kind of sound, is a physical experience the recording cannot prepare you for. Rated PG. Running time approximately [3 hours including intermission].
225 W. Douglas, Ste. 202
Wichita, KS 67202
316.265.3107
office@mtwichita.org