If you’d told me a year ago that there was going to be a performance of the musical ‘Les Milibandles’, I would have made some very sarcastic noises of disbelief. But this is the kind of thing that happens when a couple of second years decide they should put on a show from scratch in the space of six weeks.
Maybe I should explain that more clearly. At the start of the winter term this year, Fleur Snow and I were appointed as music co-ordinators on the college Arts Committee, and like any newcomers we were keen to make our mark. Fleur (who was behind last year’s magnificent ABBA/Lord of the Rings hybrid play, The Wizard Takes it All) suggested a musical at the end of the term, to complement the pantomime before christmas and the various Arts Week plays in the summer. Without thinking it through any further, we mentioned it to the our student Arts Rep Chloe at our first meeting, and before we knew it there was a musical scheduled for end of term. The only problem was that we didn’t actually have a musical. After a few minutes of head-scratching, I tentatively brought up the idea of a politics/Les Misérables crossover, something we’d joked about last year. We couldn’t come up with anything better, and so Project Les Milibandles began.
Disclaimer: I had never written anything like this before. My published works amount to one mid-length article in a student newspaper, and it took me about a month and a half to finish it. So we had to use our respective skills as best we could, combining my enthusiasm for parody with Fleur’s ability to produce large chunks of script out of nowhere and actually get things done. As it turned out, once we’d agreed to base it on the 2015 general election, and decided which political figures corresponded to which Les Mis characters, a lot of the plot became quite obvious. Who else but Nick Clegg would sing about ‘Empty Seats at Empty Tables’, and how could a dodgy innkeeper be characterised as anyone except Nigel Farage?
Churning out a script for an 80-minute show was hectic but a lot of fun; rehearsing it was another challenge altogether. Have you ever tried getting a cast of 25 Oxford students to turn up in the same place at the same time? Well, we managed it exactly once: the performance. Sport, essay crises, and church retreats all played their part in making each rehearsal group different from the last one, and we owe a lot of thanks to everyone who agreed to sing someone else’s part while they were absent. I actually missed the very last rehearsal, so I’m especially guilty.
Still, things gradually came together, and having survived a last-minute scare about whether the backstage area (i.e. a lecture room) was going to be free, we gathered on the Thursday night as the Hall filled up, all with absolutely no idea how the performance was going to go. It probably didn’t help that the college Principal had told me a few hours earlier that he’d mentioned the performance to Ed Miliband’s wife (?!). As the opening strains of ‘Look Down’ boomed out of the amp we thought we’d lost a few minutes earlier, we marched in to deliver our masterpiece.
There were some shaky moments early on; some inspired improvisation from Fleur steered us through a later-than-expected key change, while Robbie Belok as our very own Farage sang through half-forgotten lines with a confidence much appreciated by the audience. But the absurdity of the election, the drama of Les Mis, and the humour of the contrast between them, all added up to make the show an ultimate success. We had fantastic performances from the whole cast – I’d name more of them but frankly I’d end up naming all of them – and the enjoyment we were taking from it ended up being shared by the audience.
So, putting together a musical halfway through a term: I’d definitely recommend it. It was a bit of a rollercoaster, but an immensely rewarding one, and all I can do is thank everyone who gave up their time to be involved – most of all Fleur – and everyone who came along to see its one-off realisation!
By Freddie Hinds (Second Year Physics and Philosophy)