Fingernail Biting and Les Miserables

I'm beginning to bite my nails in anticipation. I mentioned a while back that I went to an audition for You Can't Take It With You and The Comedy of Errors? I STILL haven't heard anything more about that, and I'm starting to wonder... Tell me, are you contacted even if you don't get a part? I don't care very much about not getting a part in either play (though like I've said before, I live in a small town and that seems rather unlikely), but this waiting is driving me crazy! EDIT- Just learned that You Can't Take It With You has been cast, but not Comedy of Errors.

*SOME LES MISERABLES SPOILERS* Last night we watched a 1952 version of Les Miserables. Hm... how can I say what I thought of it...nicely? I managed to get through the first part of the movie without too much, "What about such-and-such!?"s or "That's not in the book!"s but honestly. *sigh* The first thing they did that was upsetting was reuniting Cosette and Fantine. Sure, it's ha little appier that way, and I didn't mind it TOO terribly. The upsetting thing that happened around the same time was what didn't happen - we didn't see Valjean rescuing Cosette from the Thenardiers. As a matter of fact, they cut the Thenardier family out completely, except for Gavroche, who was in for a few minutes (and didn't die.) So no Eponine. It's a mystery to me how she can be so popular with fans of the musical (which turned her into a patient, deserving martyr suffering from the cruelty of Marius and Cosette) and so unpopular with the movie-makers. Very odd, indeed.

But all of this was bearable until it came to Marius. Valjean was just coming home to his little shack at the convent (he was oddly well-dressed) when there was some shooting in the street, and a strange (and rather goofy-looking) young man ran into his yard to escape, claiming that he was in trouble for calling the king a fat pig. "Oh, please," I said. "Please, please don't be Marius." "It is," my sister said with confident pessimism. But it wasn't! It was "Mar-ee-YOOS!" Ugh! That's how they said his name... it was unbearable. And he and Cosette? "Fifties fluff," as my mom put it. Javert wasn't too bad, though his suicide scene was. Valjean ran after him and saw his drowned body floating in the water, five seconds after he had watched him jump in. Can a person really drown in five seconds? He was right THERE and he didn't even try to save him. Bah.

And we MEANT to get the 1935 version from Netflix, but they sent us this one instead! It's really too bad. I don't think I'm particularly hard to please as a Les Mis fan, but when people go around leaving out characters and making it all happier than it ought to be, what am I supposed to do?

One good thing came of the movie: My dad and sister and I had an interesting discussion about epic stories. I'll post more about that some other time. Soon, I hope.