It is 35 years since the RSC and Cameron Mackintosh unveiled an improbable musical based on Victor Hugo’s tale of the revolutionary 1830s Paris Uprising to decidedly mixed reviews.
Now a grittily rebooted version of this world-conquering blockbuster returns to its home in the former Queen’s Theatre, itself glitteringly refurbished during a 20-week closure to rectify wartime bomb damage and a 1959 rebuild, and renamed the Sondheim.
Laurence Connor and James Powell’s new staging features a charismatic central turn from leonine, octave-hopping Jon Robyns as Valjean, the convict-turned-mayor who ends up manning the revolutionary barricades.
There’s a timely sense of the harsh realities of the wealth divide, and new designs based on Hugo’s own gloomy paintings. Don’t worry, there’s plenty of Eighties-style emoting to please the die-hard fans too.
In 1985, music-and-words duo Schönberg and Boublil and a host of co-creators heralded a sea change in musical theatre with Les Mis, towards something serious, impassioned, operatic. There are no dance routines here, just well-drilled scenes of degradation and sacrifice.
The through-sung score, with its tum-te-tum rhythms and recurring motifs, moves from rousing anthems to passionate, spotlit declarations of love and loss. As in Hamlet, almost everybody dies, and the few that survive have their dreams smashed. It’s not my preferred cup of tea but it’s supremely well done here.
Carrie Hope Fletcher and Shan Ako deliver show-stopping turns as helpless Fantine and luckless Eponine. Bradley Jaden sings up a storm but seems faintly comic as Valjean’s nemesis Javert. Lily Kerhoas and Harry Apps do as well as they can as Cosette and Marius, whose only function is to fall dopily in love amid a massacre. Ian Hughes, drafted in after two other actors were injured, has a ball as the criminal innkeeper Thénardier.
The tavern and brothel scenes blend comedy and brutality in a way that seems to have gone through political incorrectness and come out the other side to reflect harsh reality.
All in all, Les Mis and the refurbished Sondheim feel fit for purpose for the next decade or three.
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