A longtime fan of theater, Frith says her love affair with the popular 28-year-old musical — adapted by French musicians Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg from Victor Hugo’s epic 1862 novel — began in 1988. She been attending performances rather more than routinely for the past 25 years. “I have always been a fan of the theatre, and everybody was raving about Les Misérables when it first came out in 1985,” Frith told the BBC. ”Eventually, three years later, I managed to get tickets to see the show, fell in love with it, went to see it again, and it just grew from there.” Since then, she estimates she’s spent upwards of £50,000 on tickets, or nearly $81,000. Forget how many entry-level Beemers that might buy and think about the time commitment: Divide 957 trips by 365 days in a year and you’re talking a performance every day for over two-and-a-half years (somewhat less if you occasionally double-down on matinees). And it’s not like Les Miz is a quick hour-and-a-half job. We’re talking roughly three hours to get through your average production. Then there’s the time it takes Frith to travel to London and back to her home in King’s Stanley near the town of Stroud: four hours, round trip. The perks of ultra-fandom? Frith says she “got to know quite a few cast members over the years,” and that she’s seen 25 different casts in all. Her favorites to date: Alfie Boe as Jean Valjean and Matt Lucas as the villainous innkeeper Thenardier. Will she count viewings of the new film starring Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway and Russell Crowe toward her total? She didn’t say, but admitted she can’t wait to see it: ”I will have to look at it with a totally different mind-frame because it’s going to be a film, not a stage version, but from what I’ve heard it’s going to be absolutely mind-blowing.”
