Back At Les Mis

One of my favourite days in a new theatre contract is the day you're assigned a dressing room. Especially when it's a particularly long contract because your dressing room becomes a second home. If you have an audition or meeting in the morning/afternoon and don't have enough time to make it home before the show that evening, you head to your dressing room to take a nap or get some work done. There's wifi, plug sockets, a kettle and a fridge (and in my case an abundance of skincare products and the materials to create a shabby cross stitch). Yes, dressing room day is always one of my favourites however, this time around it felt a little more poignant. 

Queen's Theatre, Dressing Room 6, 2015

     For newcomers to me and my blog, back in 2013 I was cast as Eponine in Les Miserables at the Queen's theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue. I stayed in that role until February 2016 and for just shy of three years I sat in the corner seat of Dressing Room 6 wedged behind the fridge, up against the hot air-con pipe that fed through the window, next to the phone. It wasn't ideal but when I had the chance to move when cast change came around not once but twice, I couldn't bear the idea of moving. So, when it then came to choosing a place to sit in the new dressing room at the Gielgud for the staged concert version of Les Miserables, again, the idea of sitting anywhere other than in the corner by the window felt very odd indeed. I promised the girls that if they let me sit there, next to what has become the tea shelf, I would be "Tea Bitch" for the next 16 weeks and make tea for all in the interval. 

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And just like that, I’m back @lesmizofficial !!! I asked the girls really nicely if I could have the far corner space in the Gielgud as that’s where I sat back in 2013 at the Queens (now the Sondheim!) and they were very kind to let me be nostalgic! It felt weird to sit anywhere else and seeing as I’m next to the tea shelf, I’ve promised them I’ll be on tea duty for the next 16 weeks! Ready girlies?! @katysecombe @lilykerhoas @shanofficially 💋💋💋

A post shared by Carrie Hope Fletcher (@carriehopefletcher) on Aug 7, 2019 at 3:40pm PDT

       Being back at Les Mis feels beyond bizarre. It's like no time has passed at all. Everything works in pretty much to same way and even a lot of the faces around me are familiar. We all still have the same in-jokes and the same rituals, I still die a gruesome death and I still drink more tea during one show than I usually do in a month. Yet, it's also all so very different. I'm almost seven years older than the first time I stepped onto the cobbled stage and so I feel substantially less green. I find myself slipping on a different costume and singing different words (although I still have heart palpitations every time I hear the notes before anything Eponine has to sing...!). However, regardless of what has changed and what is absolutely no different, being in a theatre filled with performers who love Les Mis as much as I do, performing to a packed house full of people solely there to celebrate the show...it's a gift of a job.