olution than with the eternal truths about human nature and our beliefs in God.# It is laden with irony and arduous subject matter. The audience leaves the theatre with a heightened sense of view. Everything around them now seems more exciting. This is the effect of highly charged emotional musicals. It could be called an emotional roller coaster. The beautiful music and lyrics of Empty Chairs at Empty Tables is a typical example of the disheartening part of the story. Theres a grief that cant be spoken Theres a pain goes on and on Empty Chairs at empty tables Now my friends are dead and gone Here they talked of revolution Here it was they lit the flame Here they sang about tomorrow And tomorrow never came. On March 12, 1987, the American version of the smash London hit Les Misrables by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schnberg, with lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer, opened at the Broadway Theatre. In addition to winning eight Tony awards and other major awards throughout the world, Les Misrables has touched the heart of its international audience as few shows in history have done. This power derives from the timeless reality of the titanic novel upon which the show is based, Victor Hugo's classic, Les Misrables. More than 130 years later, wars and revolutions still litter the world, and Hugo's words still describe the undying message of his novel. The musical is telling us the story which happened over a hundred years ago yet the audience can still relate with the plight of the characters. Les Misrables reminds us that we are each part of the same human family, and that whatever our outward differences may be, our longings for individual liberty and peace are the same. Says Caird, "We saw it from the start as a very big project, and we knew that the only way we could work on it was to go back to Victor Hugo's book and start again ... We decided to specify and dramatize the wretchedness of the times in order to give some focus to Hugo's anger....
