Get your tickets, Iowa, because there’s only “one day more” before Les Misérables returns to the Des Moines Civic Center for a week of performances.
The iconic French tale of revolution, love and resilience is one of the longest-running musicals in the world, and it’s not for the faint of heart. If you go see it, prepare to lock in for a three-hour emotional journey that will leave you in awe no matter how familiar you are with the show.
Take it from Will Curry, who recently joined the tour as the show’s maestro. You won’t see him on stage, but you’ll hear his work at every moment of the performance, where the music — literally — never stops.
“You'll see the back of my head for three hours,” he joked.
Les Misérables is a sung-through musical set in 19th-century France. Based on Victor Hugo’s classic novel of the same name, it follows Jean Valjean after he is released from prison and sets out to make a new life for himself, but an obsessive police inspector, Javert, continues to pursue him. Meanwhile, the story follows the intertwining lives of many other characters as a revolution against the government grows.
For Curry, joining the show’s company in December 2023 marked a full-circle moment in his career. A Les Mis tour was his first job after graduating from Northwestern in Chicago ten years ago. At the time, he played viola for the show and was assistant conductor. But now he’ll be front and center, taking ten years of experience on other shows and infusing the knoweldge and perspective he's gained in an all-new approach to the music.
When he left his first tour of Les Mis to do the revival of Fiddler on the Roof, Curry says he quickly discovered the challenges brought about by musicals where the music stopped for periods of time to allow scenes with dialogue.
“Up until then, everything I had ever done was Les Mis; these through-composed musicals, meaning there's no dialogue, there's no scene, there's no moment when the music stops. So for me, the understanding of a musical was like an opera. That when I started conducting, I didn't stop conducting. There was never a moment to take a break," he said. "And then I left Les Mis to do the revival of Fiddler on the Roof, which has these really beautiful but long sections of dialogue, where there is no music, and I found it really difficult to understand how to craft the arc of a piece when I am only involved in half of that puzzle.”
Over the course of a decade, conducting for musicals of all sorts, he says he learned to stay connected to the story throughout and think of it not just from a musical perspective, but from a storytelling and acting perspective as well.
“That's really changed the way that I think about Les Mis as a piece,” he said. “Because for me, it was always just music. And it's so much more than that.”
This week of performances will mark the ninth time Les Mis has played in Des Moines, the last being in April 2018. Curry calls the piece “timeless” and says even those with a deep familiarity with the show can find new moments and meanings within it each time.
“The show constantly finds ways to reconnect to the contemporary experience, so things going on politically around the world and in our own country,” he said. “I think also coming out of the pandemic, this piece carries such a meaning of hope and forward motion. And does so while also reminding people of the past.”
As its musical director, Curry says he finds himself looking forward to — and also fretting over — certain musical moments within the show. His favorite moment to conduct is the show’s official opening, which happens when the the title appears over the stage after a prologue period.
“It's that iconic opening of the show… where we built ten minutes of tension to this one moment, and the orchestra just explodes in sound and the audience explodes in applause and it's just so magical,” he said.
Curry says he also loves “the delicate stuff.” Well-known songs sung by the women in the show, like Fantine’s “I Dreamed a Dream” and Éponine’s “On My Own,” are some of his favorites.
But other moments, like in the song “Bring Him Home” in Act II, prove themselves to be challenging night after night. Paired with the stakes of live theater, where nothing is pre-recorded and anything can go wrong, it's what makes the show so thrilling for everyone involved, Curry said.
"[It's] arguably one of the most difficult numbers of the show, both for the Valjean, but also for the conductor and for the orchestra," he said. "The pacing of the number is very delicate, and everybody knows that. Everybody is looking forward to it."
Curry leads an orchestra of 14 people who all travel with the show just like the rest of the company. But he says when they play together, the sound produced could easily have come from an ensemble of 40.
“I love the fact that [Les Mis] feels larger than life,” he said. “There is something about the piece that feels heightened, feels bigger than real life. And as someone who has a pretty wild imagination — I have a highly creative brain — I love the sense that we go to a place that is different than where we are, so that when the night is done, I sort of come back to Earth, and I feel changed. I come back to Earth in a place where I feel more open minded and creative and hopeful.”
Les Mis will perform at the Des Moines Civic Center from Feb. 27 to March 3.
