Les MisÈrables

There's no secret to the success of London's longest-running musical. First there are the songs (soaring schmaltz, lingering lyrics, and powerful pop-hooks). Then there are the singers (plump, well-kept voices smoothing out the ragged chorus in a conventional paradox). And then there are the sets: spectacularly film-fabulous besides being easy on the Odeon-trained eye - no need to work your own point-of-view when convicts, prostitutes, urchins and giant tilting hulls of Parisian masonry are borne ceaselessly into the proscenium frame with the super-swift aid of a massive turntable.

At this point, I must confess to snooty critical instincts which urge me to auto-pan all plush, high-res accessibility as lazy or even immoral. But art-house gripes just can't get a grip on a giant West End smash like Les Mis: bombast and vibrato tear-jerks are part of the prêt-a-consommer package. Les Mis (with a libretto lifted from Victor Hugo) is renownedly grimier than its peers: the show is stolen by Chris Vincent and Tracie Bennett as the 'Master of the House' (a mordant, pox-marked Fagin) and his raucous pompadoured missis - their ghastly wigged and powdered deaths-heads pop up out of the floor to trouble the happy ending.

But even after acknowledging 'Les Misérables'' right to be populist (liberté, égalité, fraternité etc), I remained convinced that the ardent score, for all its sentimental flourishes, deserved an expression which was a little less distorted by histrionic syncopations (some of the lead singers) and synthetic wanging (the accompaniment). It's easy to take it that half-inch too far when you've been singing these songs since your first audition. But beware the Pompeii-effect of becoming a 'theatrical institution', which can fossilize a production just as it's flouncing towards self-parody.