Standing ovations and Les Miserables

I remember playing in Les Miserables a few years ago.

I had been the rehearsal and audition pianist on the show in the West End for years, and was head-hunted to take on the keyboard 1 part on the national tour. For those of you who don't know the show, it lasts three and a quarter hours (all but four characters are dead by the end - it's a fun evening). So doing 8 shows a week and two rehearsals calls for a fair amount of stamina.
Now I don't know about the new arrangement that's in the West End now, but in the original version keyboard 1 plays the entire show. And I mean the entire show. There are four volumes of music to play through each performance. In Act 2 there are two breaks, and the second one used to be just long enough to swivel 360 degrees (I was on a typist's chair) and start playing again.

Of course, the best show was when the barricades got stuck. That means just one thing for the musicians - overtime!

Les Miserables is such an extraordinary show, and we used to get standing ovations every night. After about six weeks of this, we started to judge how well the show had gone on how long it took the front row of the audience to stand up. Less than 3 seconds was a good show, more than about 6 seconds and it was definitely dodgy.

The human brain can get used to anything, even success.

Jeremy is the co-author of Successful Singing Auditions

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