Here’s the thing about Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s Les Misérables: It might actually be the perfect piece of middlebrow entertainment. Based on the epic (i.e. long) 1862 novel by Victor Hugo, it is high-minded and literary enough to appeal to the upper-crusters while stuffed with enough romance and melodrama to satisfy the rabble (a.k.a. tourists).
Then again, the show wouldn’t be much to write home about if it weren’t for its set list that contains hit after hit after hit—a veritable mob of tuneful, emotionally resonant, Dune-sized earworms. And, by the way, if you think “perfect piece of middlebrow entertainment” is a backhanded compliment, you’re wrong. To create something as monolithic, as widely-loved as Les Misérables is a true feat. It might not be art, exactly, but it’s exquisite entertainment. (Now that was a backhanded compliment.)
If you’ve seen Les Miz multiple times, then there isn’t much this new touring production (based on the “reimagined” staging that opened on Broadway in 2014) will offer you. The famous turntable stage that lent the original show a sense of fluid yet relentless motion? Gone. In its place are a series of intricate sets, impressive but with the cost of a choppier staging. And a number of striking images from the original production—entirely dependent on the turntable’s rotation—are recreated here but in lesser form. (The one song that’s actually improved by all of this is “Empty Chairs and Empty Tables,” despite the fact that its staging now includes literally zero chairs and/or tables.) Then there’s the raft of new projections that appear behind every scene—totally fine when they are made to resemble period-appropriate paintings and landscapes, but they look cheap and downright ghastly whenever they try to be “cinematic.” That their low point comes during a march through the the Paris sewers is quite appropriate.
And yet, despite all of these complaints, the stage is still full of mighty fine actors with mighty fine voices who sing all the right songs and sing the hell out of them. There’s still the harrowing story of penitent bread thief Jean Valjean (Nick Cartell), who breaks the terms of his unfair parole and is pursued across the years by his nemesis, the dogged police inspector Javert (Josh Davis). There’s the resilient, pathetical Fantine (Melissa Mitchell), whose young daughter Cosette (Zoe Glick/Sophie Knapp) is living with the awful Mr. and Mrs. Thenardier (J. Anthony Crane and Allison Guinn). There’s still Marius (Joshua Grosso), the young student and revolutionary who instantly falls in love with a now-teenaged Cosette (Jillian Butler) despite the fact that his friend Eponine (Phoenix Best), the Thenardiers’ daughter, is also in love with him and is also just objectively better. There are still the barricades, the failed revolution, the question “Who am I” and its spine-tingling answer: “I’m Jean Valjean.”
In other words, for all the issues with this new staging, it’s still Les Miz. You’d have to try pretty hard to screw it up, and this production isn’t trying nearly hard enough.
Cadillac Palace Theatre. Music by Claude-Michel Schönberg. Lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer. Book by Schönberg and Alain Boublil. Directed by Laurence Connor and James Powell. With ensemble cast. Running time: 2hrs 55mins; one intermission.