Created by Ayla Glass and Kelly Lynne D’Angelo

Directed by Laurine Price

Review by Annie Aslett

Exactly what you think. The tagline on the Les Milléniables poster, accompanied by its avocado-clad Cosette, knows precisely what it’s doing. A specific niche of Fringe audiences will see the Les Milléniables poster and immediately buy a ticket. This show was created by millennials, for millennials and it does not disappoint – the 50-minute whirlwind is as anti-boomer, pro-Beyoncé and avocado-heavy as you could hope for.

Ayla Glass and Kelly Lynne D’Angelo’s creation is brought to life by a wonderfully enthusiastic cast: led by our female (yay!) Valjean, Natalie Sullivan. In this adaptation, she’s an innocent college grad with hopeful ambition until she meets her nemesis in the form of boomer-coded student debt collector Javert, played fantastically evilly by Jonathan Walker Gilland. The show loosely follows the original Les Misérables story, with all your favourite characters reimagined with millennial archetypes. 

A highlight is the transformation of Fantine from a hard-done-by single mother forced to sell herself to provide for her child, to a hard-done-by single mother forced to sell feet pics to provide for her child. D’Angelo’s rendition of I’m A Slave 4 U (Capitalism) is hysterical. The whole show is peppered with 00s bangers perfectly chosen to fill in for their original Les Mis counterparts – think Robyn’s (Dancing) On My Own and Welcome to the (Red &) Black Parade.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that Les Milléniables is all surface-level millennial gags, however, as the revolution-themed source material allows the creators to include some poignant messages that get to the heart of issues that millennials face and care about. Given the rough-and-ready costumes, wigs and staging, it would be a treat to see this musical given a bigger budget, stage and runtime to bring the show to its full potential.

The line between millennial musical and Les Mis parody is perfectly pitched, providing enough of both that a musicals-neutral millennial or Gen X Les Mis fan will enjoy the show, while those of us who fall bang in the middle of the Les Mis fan/millennial Venn diagram could only have dreamed a dream of this.