Les Misérables - Third National Tour
Philadelphia - 27 May 2000
Stephen Bishop and Trent Blanton
Bishop was my first Grantaire, back in 1998, but I will always think of him as Javert. There are two things I will always remember about his Javert: the way he twisted “Yes, Valjean, you want a deal!”, and the way he would do a full body twitch on “I am the law and the law is not mocked!”
Trent - my apologies for managing to catch you looking like that *g*. Trent is probably my favourite Grantaire ever. He had at least three ways of twisting “Will your death be one more lie?”, none of them attacking Enjolras. And of course, he has an absolutely gorgeous voice.
Stephen Tewksbury
Tremendously sweet guy. This was my second time stage dooring LM - the first time was couple months earlier, during a freak snowstorm in Dayton, OH. Annii and I were too chicken to actually managed to talk to anyone after Tewks let us inside. We’re much better when we’re outside. So we had to thank him and get a picture with him.
Ben Davis and Diana Kaarina
This whole Les Mis thing is Ben’s fault, really. If he hadn’t been so incredibly awesome as Feuilly, I would not have been ensemble and understudy obsessed and thus would not have spent so much of my life with this show. Ben is and always will be my favourite Feuilly; I can’t help that. This was the first time I met him, and he was so sweet to the extremely dorky fangirl.
Diana Kaarina is probably the sweetest Eponine ever in terms of character interp. She had just been promoted a month or so before Philly, and it was very good news. I’m not often a fan of sweet Eponine - I prefer tough Eponine - but I loved Diana.
Regan Thiel and Tim Howar
Tim and Regan were adorable and notorious. LM internet fandom underwent a considerable expansion during the time Tim and Regan were with the tour - they joined in the spring of 1998 in preparation for Toronto and stayed through the summer of 2000. They became a couple at some point, complete with namesmush, even had a fan site devoted to the two of them. And then they left the tour and went back to Toronto and at some point broke up. But they were kind of the original fandom couple. They were wonderful on stage together, and such nice people, that I think the Marius/Cosette took over in people’s minds.
And they were terrific. Regan was a sweet Cosette but with some spunk to her; Tim’s Marius was terribly adorable but had a voice that could belong to an Enjolras. Very sweet people to their fans at the stage door. Tim will spend all evening performing for his fangirls because he loves an audience. And I do mean performing - a tremendously entertaining manic personality. He is always “up” for his fans. And they rightly love him for it - I certainly did.