On My Own

Samantha Barks's voice has a particular quality of longing without self-pity — she performs Éponine's unrequited devotion with enough clarity and self-awareness that it never tips into the sentimental. The song is Éponine's most exposed moment, standing in the literal rain singing about a love she cannot have to an audience who already knows she will not get it. The production here is characteristically spare and theatrical: piano and strings serving a voice that carries the dramatic weight. What makes Barks's interpretation special is how she holds the intelligence alongside the feeling — Éponine knows what she knows, and that knowledge makes the ache more rather than less precise. The French musical tradition from which the show emerged gives the melody a particular quality of beautiful sadness that the English production inherits and makes its own. Listen when you have loved something honestly and without expectation of return.