The Right Word for the Job

So before I left London I made a point of seeing Les Miserables...twice. I may have developed a slight obsession/burning love for it over the past year or so, and I didn't want to waste my best chance to see it. Needless to say, I had a great time both times I saw it.

But the second time the cast seemed a bit off. They made mistakes in a few places, which weren't huge, but were noticeable if you know the whole play by heart (Did I mention the obsession part?). What I learned from them was that changing a single word can change an entire song, scene, act, or, potentially, play.

This was most noticeable for me in the scene in which we're introduced to Fantine. There's a line in the song in that scene which is supposed to run "Cossette needs a doctor, there's no time to lose." The chorus member singing it screwed up and sang "Your child needs a doctor, there's no time to lose."

This may not seem like a big change, but a few scenes later when we run into a child named Cossette, without any further mention of her, that single mention of her name becomes pretty key to understanding why we should care about her, and why the scene is even happening at all.

Just an example of how simple mistakes can effect a narrative pretty drastically.