aid, Belle in Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin) - both realize that there is more to life and yearn to be free of their respective prisons "where depression is just status-quo." This song served to ‘set the scene’ and introduce us to the characters lives. It is a prime example of the constant, collaborative musical.Les MiserablesLes Miserables is laden with irony and arduous subject matter. The audience leaves the theatre with a heightened sense of view. Everything around them 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.There’s a grief that can’t be spokenThere’s a pain goes on and onEmpty Chairs at empty tablesNow my friends are dead and goneHere they talked of revolutionHere it was they lit the flameHere they sang about tomorrowAnd tomorrow never came.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...
