Halloween is usually about costumes and candy. We got the costumes part right, at least in seeing them. Yesterday, we used Halloween to drive over to Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania, to see their production of Les Miserables, even though it was just a Thursday, and so a workday. It was the only day we could get tickets.

First, we ate. We stopped at the Main Street Diner, mostly because I love anything with the word “diner” in it. The food was quite good, and the service was good, but I might hesitate in going back because they had several TVs on, and I really hate seeing TV when I am in a restaurant.

Back to the play. Mer and I knew two of the students involved in Les Mis – one in the pit and one as a chorus member on stage, who even had a few solos. I am impressed that a college with no graduate students and only a theater minor (no theater major) could pull off a musical on the scale of Les Mis. What is impressive is that they did, and did so really well. The only negatives I remember catching were the occasional failure of a microphone for a non-major character. Mer and I were in the front row, and there were two or three times we could not hear the actor singing, but that was rare. The other negative was in casting – the young woman playing the main love interest, Cosette, is supposed to be the jaw-dropping beauty of the play. She was pretty, but the girl playing Eponine was noticeably more striking, especially with her long, dark hair. Even Meredith commented on it after the play, and we both thought the director should have had her tuck up her hair for the play so she would not be so pretty.

Having said that, the production was a colossal success. The pit was nearly perfect, the singers were all well cast, the sets were huge and effective. All of the leads were strong. While Grove did not have the typical moving stage associated with big-budget productions of the play, they compensated for it effectively by having characters walk around the front of the pit. I am still in awe at how well the cast and crew did for this musical. The notes said it was the thirty-fifth and last year for the college director, who was retiring, and he wanted to go out on a huge production. He did, and they all did very well.