00:00Good afternoon. Now, this is super exciting. Lovely to speak to Michael Burney again. Now, Michael, you are directing the full, absolutely the full Les Mis in Brighton this August with Brighton Theatre Group.
00:13And it's being specially released once in a lifetime opportunity, specially released to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Les Mis.
00:21How wonderful that it falls to you to direct this. You must be thrilled. You must be daunted. What are you?
00:26A bit of both, really, because I've directed the musical twice before, but as the teen edition, up to 19 year old.
00:37So I never thought or anyone ever thought that it would be released to 11 societies around the UK to celebrate the 40th year.
00:45So when we got the phone call, which was about 18 months ago, we couldn't believe it to begin with.
00:50And then it started to kind of sink in and little bits of it came apparent of what they wanted us to do.
00:58So, yeah, it's really exciting. Absolutely. Once in a lifetime opportunity to perform this with the adults.
01:05Yeah. And absolutely right. They're keeping a degree of oversight, aren't they?
01:09Because it's their product and they want to entrust it to you and make sure it's going to be as best as it possibly can be.
01:15But presumably that makes it a little bit more complicated in some ways.
01:20It kind of does. Although we always, whatever we do, whether it be Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was our last one or whatever we were talking about, Jimmy, we always absolutely take care of them.
01:30We really do. We really look after them. We spend a lot of money on the productions.
01:36This is costing a lot of money. So we never go into this lightly.
01:41We've all got millions of years of experience of working on these musicals.
01:46So I don't let this, the name of Le Maze, the name of Cameron Magitosh, kind of overshadow of what we are doing.
01:53We've got a rehearsal tonight on the barricade and everyone's really excited at rehearsals.
01:59We've got a huge cast. A lot of people auditioned for this.
02:01Well, to get back at stage, wow, you had some interest for the auditions, didn't you?
02:05We did. We had, we launched it the week after Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
02:10So the beginning of March, I think we auditioned and we, it took literally a month.
02:15We had about 400 people audition, which was, we'd never had that amount of people.
02:20And everyone got the opportunity to audition if they applied.
02:24We called it round one is everyone.
02:26And then we went to round two where we narrowed it down.
02:29And round three, the team from London came to round three, which were the recalls.
02:33And they saw our choices of, say, the six Jean Valjean's or five or six Javert's, Tenardier's.
02:40And Chris Key, who's absolutely lovely, he's the associate director in London and around the world.
02:45He basically travels around the world looking after Le Maze.
02:47So he was really supportive and he's coming down in a few weeks to watch rehearsals as well,
02:52which I'm really looking forward to.
02:53And, and yeah, they, they have been really, really supportive, Cameron McIntosh's team on this.
03:01And it's going to be at the Brighton New Theatre.
03:04Brighton Theatre Royal, which will be a beautiful venue to put Le Maze on.
03:08We've got a fantastic set from Glasgow, which will look absolutely beautiful.
03:12It's huge.
03:13It's going to look really, really good.
03:14But full orchestra, even Cameron McIntosh's team, our musical director had to go to London
03:21to work with the musical director of the London production.
03:26They then come down to our sits probe to listen, to make sure it sounds perfect.
03:31So they are really hands-on with, with this production.
03:34And we've got a great, a great team behind it.
03:38I mean, it's a direct to Corey.
03:39Well, the fact that you're hands-on, that must encourage confidence as well, mustn't it?
