Music

Les Miserables: Cosette’s favourite things

As the opening night of the Sydney season of Les Miserables is fast approaching, we asked Emily Langridge, who plays Cosette, to list her five favourite moments from the production. Narrowing down just five moments from one of the best loved musicals of our time was no easy feat, but Emily has provided us with five incredible moments that help to make Les Miserables the unforgettable and enduring musical that it is. We hope you enjoy this insight into Emily, Cosette and Les Miserable.

1. I really love that I get to perform in some of the ensemble scenes such as The Factory and Lovely Ladies at the beginning of the show. I get to see and interact with way more people than I would if I was just doing my Cosette track and I get to be different characters which is so much fun.

2. The ‘love bump’, which is what the directors called the moment Marius and Cosette run into each other on the street in Paris. I love it because I get to come on stage as Cosette for the first time and fall straight in love! How lucky is that? And it just for that brief moment completely changes the tone of the scene and the two of us are just in our own little world and it’s a really special moment.

Les Mis Marius and Cosette 814x450

3. The section of Rue Plumet between Val Jean and Cosette when he comes to her in the garden is an important moment to me because Cosette gets the opportunity to stand up for herself and ask for what she wants. That moment shows that she isn’t a child anymore and deserves to be treated as such. She isn’t such a soft character as people might think, so it’s a cool moment to be able to show that.

4. ‘A Heart Full of Love’ is one of my favourite moments because it’s in such a different vein to a lot of the show. It’s light and full of love and it’s so wonderful to have those few minutes for our characters not to be struggling and facing hardships but to just be young and completely in love and hopeful. The song is beautiful and Euan (Marius) is so stunning to work with, we’re such good friends that I’m really grateful I get some of these moments in the show with him.

5. A backstage moment I love that somehow evolved from the very beginning that some people may have seen on social media is after Cosette and Marius have left the wedding we go and stand in the hallway behind the stage with Kerrie and Patrice (Eponine and Fantine) and the kids who play young Eponine, young Cosette and Gavroche, and we do a line of high fives down the hall as the rest of the cast runs off from the wedding. It’s just one of those little moments that we’ve added in to keep some fun in such an intense show!

Les Miserables will open at Sydney’s Capitol Theatre on March 19. Click here to purchase your tickets now.

PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Murphy