local les miz wows audience

(first of a two-part story)

am back! i have been terribly amiss the past three weeks. my apologies.

i had a deadline to cope at work this month and wednesday last week was d-day, if you will.

i had thursday and friday off from work. i planned on posting several stories that i have been composing in my thoughts during the past weeks but wonder of wonders, i caught a bug that left me feeling sick the past three days! i am not complaining that much, though because i probably was averaging 12 hours of sleep a day since thursday - thank you!

we left the office wednesday night excited for the two days away from the office that saw us working 12 hour days six times a week for nearly four months. in my excitement, i accidentally left my mobile on my desk - and i only discovered that when i reached my apartment 25 miles away! there goes the first item on my what-not-to-do list when you are looking forward to a four-day weekend. darn!

thursday, i was still feeling upbeat and enjoying the sun. i cleaned the trunk of my car, got rid of all the junk that accumulated since i don't know when. after lunch, i gathered half of my laundry (last time i did my laundry was the time when i was composing my father's day post - yeah, it's more than six weeks ago, lol) and drove to the corner laundromat. folks, if you do your laundry outside of your apartment, i recommend you do it during the weekday and i guarantee you, you'll have a swell time. there were only three other people doing their laundry! i had an easy time.

after doing my laundry, i took a shower. yeah, i didn't have time to shower before driving to the laundromat. and i think that got me sick. i got exposed to heat and sun for about two hours and went to shower immediately, and it wasn't so wise of me. i didn't feel sick until the next morning though. i was still able to drive to AMC and catch three movies: "my sister's keeper" - a weepie, "hairy oops, harry potter" - most polished adaptation, and "funny people" - hmm, i'll keep my mouth shut until i post my review of this one... hahaha!

friday came, and i felt a little pain in my nasal palate (is that a medically correct term?) when i woke up - darn! i was coming down with a cold. f@@@! there goes my plan of driving to the beach! i didn't get off my bed until 2 o'clock. i was feeling a little bit dizzy but i didn't have a fever. i moved to the couch outside my room and popped in my true blood dvds while i fixed myself a quick lunch.

i was comfortably laying on my couch when i suddenly realized i had a musical to watch. i was supposed to be at the azusa pacific university theater for the musical "les miserables", which is part of their summer workshop series this year. i thought it starts at six and i was asked not to be late because the door to the theater is by the stage and the cast would get distracted if the door is opened while the play is on - i was so pissed. luckily, when i checked, the ticket indicated that the play starts at 7. i took a quick hot shower with the heater - yes, a heater in the middle of summer! - running by the shower door. i was sick, what can i do?

according to mapquest, the drive to azusa from my apartment would only take 25 minutes. if i was being myself and followed mapquest i wouldn't have made it on time. it took me an hour and a half just to get to the venue! blame the three car smash-ups on the 605. blame the crawling 10 freeway that connects to the 605 freeway. blame everything but not me! i left my apartment a little after 5 and reached the venue five minutes before they opened the doors. whew!

tita lydia solis and her companions were already in the venue when i entered the main lobby.

when the door to the main theater was opened, we were ushered in to a small cozy theater that has a seating capacity of about 150. it was an intimate setting for a huge production like "les miz", could they pull it off? i was a little worried the group might not. but i was wrong. it was quite an impressive production.

the story of ex-convict-on-the-run jean valjean, his pursuer inspector javert, fantine, eponine, cossette, marius, and a host of other memorable characters based on victor hugo's masterpiece have been told and retold in various forms for many years now. the musical itself have been staged for more than what one could imagine, yet the story at its core never seems to tire. and when you add the music by Claude-Michel Schonberg, Alain Boublil, and Herbert Kretzmer, the story takes on another dimension and the characters come to life as vibrant and as tragic as hugo had originally intended them to be.

to be continued