Being Really Vocal

Just a quick follow-up to yesterday's all too brief comments on Les Miserables. I've read little in the way of reviews, preferring to make up my mind for myself, but I am vaguely aware that there have been some negative comments about the less gifted singers in the film, Russell Crowe particularly. In fact, my good friend Ferdinand, who is one heck of a talented singer, was pretty critical of our Oscar-winner on the vocal front when he mentioned the movie to me, and his opinion is one to be respected. But I disagree, nonetheless.

One important thing to bear in mind here is that the original show was a vehicle for the RSC, not a bevy of Broadway song-and-dance merchants. In that regard it seems to me that showing off splendid voices is not the point of what's going on, despite the fact that some numbers obviously work as brilliant show-stoppers: obvious example, On My Own. A parallel here would be Bart's Oliver. The songs function as vehicles for the development of character. A complete non-vocalist can carry off Fagin - I know, because I've done it. Only at school show level, of course, but you can still make it really work for people.

I'd say the rule is that as long as your pitch is okay and you have an assured sense of rhythm you can make almost anything work. And I reckon that's what Crowe does. Indeed, in some ways that seems just right for his character to me. The limitations of the voice work.

Now that we've grown accustomed to voices being amplified in musicals we need to recognise that the kind of powerful singing that used to be a necessity to carry over the band or orchestra doesn't mean so much anymore. That kind of trained voice tended to bring with it a sort of falseness, an odd fruitiness, that was an obstacle to verisimilitude. In some ways I prefer the sound of ordinary voices with little, if any, real technique. They sound to me unspoilt.