Guico, Jem Mariel S. P.

E 4

2nd Year – BS Psychology Mr. Gerodias

Research into famous broad way musicals. Highlight its relationship to dance, its history,
its culture and tradition.

Broadway musicals is a presentational style dance of a story. The dance movements in

musicals is to show the storyline of the musical. It is like you are acting out what the lyrics are
saying. One of the famous broadway musicals is Les Misérables. It is a musical adaption of
Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel. In 1980, the original French musical of Les Misérables was
premiered in Paris with direction by Robert Hossein. Cameron Mackintosh, a producer, made an
English-language adaptation of Les Misérables in London since October 1985 which makes it
the longest-running musical in the West End and second longest-running musical in the world.

Les Misérables is a story of a French peasant and his desire for redemption, his name is
Jean Valjean. He served 19 years in jail for stealing a loaf of bread for his sister’s starving child.
After his release, he decided to break his parole and start a new life, but a police inspector didn’t
let him escape. Valjean and some characters in the play decided to went into a revolutionary
period in France, where young idealists wanted to overthrow the government in Paris. Les
Misérables is an old novel and if we watch the musical, we will see the culture and tradition of
Paris in the 19th century through their clothes, diction, behaviour, the law that can be seen in the
storyline, etc. Les Misérables was negatively criticized and a lot of things happened before it
become the longest-running broadway musical.