A Christmas play based on a scene from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Program Notes

Our play is based on an incident which comes early in one of Victor Hugo's greatest novels, Les Misérables - ("The Wretched Ones").

This book was published while Hugo was in exile in England in 1862. It was written as a social novel in which he made society itself the heavy in the piece. The novel was received with mixed reactions. One reviewer called it "his pernicious book." Another more charitably wrote: "It is ... the master work of fiction of this century. There are things in it quite wonderful."

In his own defense, Hugo said: "Society is to blame for tolerating prisons where innocent but unfortunate men enter to quit them hardened ruffians. Society is to blame for not acknowledging that wretched women take…