The novel on which this is based is a huge length - 5 volumes originally. What's in the stage production is a tiny fraction of Hugo's original writing.
What puzzles me is - who ever decided that the Thenardiers were 'comic characters'? They're absolute monsters, especially him. In the original book we meet him for the first time scavenging and robbing the dead on the battlefield of Waterloo.
Having read the original book - parts of it in French translation in fourth form at grammar school - it always seems different to me from some comments that I've heard made by people who obviously don't know the original background and story. Hugo, of course, took part in the 1848 revolution so he'd have been familiar with barricades from there.
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