The Musicals of Boublil and Schoenberg
Broadway Shows from the Creators of Les Misérables and Miss Saigon
Lyricist Alan Boublil and Composer Claude-Michel Schoenberg have been collaborating on some of the world’s most popular musicals and Broadway shows for over 20 years. Here is a guide to their work in the theatre.
Les Misérables (1980)
The longest running musical in London’s West End and many musical lovers' all time favourite show. Despite mediocre reviews on its London theatre debut it managed to be successful due to exceptional word of mouth. It is based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo. Les Misérables is a spectacular piece of theatre littered with great song after great song. Set not during revolutionary France as most assume but during a small pre-revolution student uprising the story of Les Misérables follows the life of Jean Valjean; a man imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread who tries to turn his life around only to be constantly thwarted by an obsessive Police Inspector Javert.
There are many Les Misérables cast and highlights recordings available. The most comprehensive and high quality (if you can ignore the performance of Eponine) is the Les Misérables Complete Symphonic Recording.
Miss Saigon (1989)
Those familiar with Puccini’s Madame Butterfly will recognise the basic plot of Miss Saigon. A soldier and a call girl fall in love. When the soldier goes back home the girl waits devotedly for the soldier to return and rekindle their romance. Boublil and Schoenberg move the story to Vietnam .
Although Miss Saigon has some spectacular moments its main strength lies in the superb love songs that occur throughout the show. It also has one of the great male lead roles on modern musical theatre in the form of the Eurasian pimp “The Engineer”.
Martin Guerre (1996)
The success of Les Misérables and Miss Saigon would always be hard to follow and Martin Guerre was Boublil and Schoenberg’s attempt to repeat their earlier successes. It was a good musical that got rewritten in a panic when it wasn’t an overnight success. This set a trend for the show in general with it being re-written repeatedly over the course of it’s not very successful theatrical life.
Although hard to find and expensive the Martin Guerre Original London Cast Recording is the first and better version of the show. It has superior orchestrations and vocal performances and it retains the original lyrics. It also doesn’t have the truly awful song, “Live with Someone You Love” which became the focus of the later productions.
The Pirate Queen (2007)
Strangely for Boublil and Schoenberg their newest musical The Pirate Queen did not make its debut on the London stage and was not produced by long time collaborator Cameron Mackintosh. Instead it was produced in the United States where it was a bigger failure than Martin Guerre closing after barely a hundred performances.
Marguerite the Musical (2008)
After the failure of their two last shows Boublil and Schoenberg decided that they would take a lesser role in their next project the musical, Marguerite. Instead of composing and writing the lyrics to the show they simply wrote the book. This has seemed to have worked well in their favour as it is currently playing to full houses in London’s West End.
For those interested in different musical theatre forms please read Minimalist Operas of the 20th Century. An extensive database of information on Broadway shows and musical theatre can be found on the Internet Broadway Database.
