Do you hear the people sing? 4 of them have ties to Utah

The national touring company of "Les Miserables" has become a Utah theater phenomenon. Each day during this opening week, the Deseret News will take a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges of producing the well-loved musical while managing personal lives.

They grew up (and one is still growing) in Salt Lake, Provo, Bountiful and Macomb, Ill. (a small town in the Nauvoo LDS Stake) -- but for a quartet of Utahns, "home" right now is on the road with the national touring company of "Les Miserables."The youngest of the group is Alison Fidel, 8, who attends Viewmont Elementary School in the Murray School District -- when she's not being tutored by the "Les Miz" company's traveling teacher/chaperone. The oldest is keyboardist Craig Casper of Bountiful, who'll turn 30 before the show closes its Salt Lake run on Dec. 5.

Somewhere in between, agewise, are former BYU students Mindy Smoot and Nancy Foster, who were roommates while performing in Orlando, Fla., and who both joined the "Les Miz" cast the same week (although they had auditioned separately -- Mindy in Salt Lake City and Nancy in Kansas City).

"We're sort of each other's support group," says Alison's mother, Melia Fidel, who was temporarily staying in a Homewood Suites apartment in Seattle at the time of the interview but was looking forward to being back home -- even just for three weeks -- with her husband, Steve, and their other two daughters and son.

Here's a brief look at how the four Utahns are adjusting to life as part of a Broadway musical touring company.

-- CRAIG CASPER says that being in "Les Miserables" has always been his goal.

"I saw it for the first time when I was a student at Bountiful High School. My dad had a business trip to New York City, and I saw it just a week after it won the Tony Award."

Just a few years before that, when he was 14, he and his family took a vacation trip to New York. "I said then, 'that's where I want to live.' "

Casper majored in piano at BYU, then served an LDS mission in Amsterdam. Shortly after returning home from his mission, he moved to New York.

"I worked for Delta Airlines for two years as a flight attendant on their Amsterdam flights -- because I could speak Dutch -- then I got a job with the national tour of 'City of Angels,' " Casper said. "Then a BYU friend of mine, Joanne Baker, who was chairman of the Gina Bachauer Competition, suggested I contact Tom Helm who had also studied with her and who was conducting the 'Les Miz' orchestra on Broadway.