“Look Down,” Broadway, 2001. Patrick Stogner as Gavroche, Christopher Mark Peterson as Enjolras, Peter Lockyer as Marius.
A strong performance, regardless of the partially blocked view.
Patrick might be a tiny Gavroche, but he has the perfect strong voice for the part.
Christopher’s Enjolras and Peter’s Marius make an excellent entrance too, with their handsome ringing voices and revolutionary fervor. It’s slightly odd to see two actors in the roles who have the same hair color and are almost the same height and build, though – for audience members in the further seats, it can’t have been easy to tell them apart.
This performance has an unusual take on the vignette between the old beggar woman, the young prostitute and the pimp. In most performances I’ve seen, the old woman is the crazier, more aggressive one, and the pimp is referring to her, speaking to the prostitute, on “She used to be no better till the clap got to her brain.” But here the prostitute is the crazed, vicious one, and the pimp is referring to her on that last line, addressing the old woman. I suppose the text does leave it ambiguous which woman that line refers to. Just like it’s ambiguous which one is named Madeleine – in some productions the pimp delivers “Move it, Madeleine!” to the prostitute, as he does here, but in others he says it to the old woman.
