Matt Jeans (emergency cover Enjolras) and Paul Wilkins (Marius)
Matt Jeans was on for Enjolras for this show. From my understanding he used to cover Enjolras in the last cast, but as far as I can tell he’s no longer with the company and must’ve been called back because for whatever reason the principal and both understudies of the current cast were unavailable. (I recall Anton Zetterholm doing a similar thing a few years back).
(It was a slightly glitchy show, Simon Gleeson (Jean Valjean)’s mic didn’t work for his first few lines, and the iron got stuck at the interval so Act 2 was delayed for about 10 minutes.)
I was super impressed with Matt’s voice (I actually wondered if they’d enhanced his audio or something, it was so clear and crisp and really stood out), and thought he did a fantastic job. He was obviously a bit rusty with the blocking (and missed one of his lines), and was slightly awkward moving up and down the barricade, but that didn’t detract from the performance.
The thing that made him a bit hard to take seriously - which was completely not his fault - is the awful awful wig they put on him. It involved a long bushy ponytail that looked so wrong, it barely looked like hair! I don’t know if that’s what he had to contend with when he was still in the cast, but surely they could’ve spared him from the indignity for one night!
His portrayal of Enjolras is very relaxed - the polar opposite of Chris Cowley - perhaps a bit too relaxed. He never shows any anger (not even to Javert at the barricade) and seems somewhat passive about the revolution. And as was the case of both Jonny Purchase and Steffan Harri, his vocals are wonderful but he doesn’t quite have the stage presence that Chris has.
(Interestingly, both Jonny and Steffan wear ponytails when they played Enjolras, and I recall in early performances Chris did as well - in fact he has a ponytail in one of the pictures outside the Queen’s Theatre - but he no longer does. And even though Chris’ hair can get totally out of control in the later parts of the show, I much prefer it without the ponytail.)
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