LES MISÉRABLES
Book by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg, based on the novel by Victor Hugo. Music by Schönberg. Lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer. Directed by John Caird and Trevor Nunn. Set design by John Napier. Lighting by David Hersey. Sound by Andrew Bruce. Costumes by Andreane Neofitou. With Randal Keith, Stephen Bishop, Thursday Farrar, Diana Kaarina, Stephen Brian Patterson, Stephanie Waters, Stephen Tewksbury, J.P. Dougherty, Aymee Garcia, Emma Hunton and Maggie Martinsen (alternating performances), and James Kuklinski and Dutch Whitlock (alternating performances). At the Colonial Theatre through June 3.

Now that we don’t have Cats to kick around anymore, Les Misérables has to shoulder much of the blame for everything that’s wrong with musical theater. It’s become the longest-running show on Broadway, but it had already set a record there in 1987 by charging $50 for the best seats on opening night. Much of what’s on stage serves to justify the high ticket prices: the huge cast, the 12,000-pound barricade around which the student revolutionaries die in pretty poses, and the famed turntable that revolves 63 times during the three-hour show. And if Les Mis helped to jack up ticket prices, it’s also an egalitarian theatrical experience. Because the actors are already diminished by the towering set and the wall of sound arising from the orchestra pit, I don’t think it makes a huge difference whether you’re in a $75 seat or a cheaper balcony perch at the Colonial.

This is the sixth time that Les Misérables has stopped in Boston, and it’s not the kind of musical that gets more interesting every time you see it. Still, as a song in the revue Forbidden Broadway concedes, it is “less misérable than other shows” — including most of the extravaganzas that try to imitate its success. Jean Valjean’s 17-year odyssey from a chain gang to the sewers of Paris, all the while pursued by the robot-like Inspector Javert (how long before Arnold Schwarzenegger gets the role?), is compelling even in the telescoped version seen here. The set design and direction make Les Mis a fairly successful hybrid of theater and film technique, and that turntable is an undeniably clever substitute for a moving camera. As for the music, there are several memorable songs with some witty lyrics, but the score frequently sounds like something Philip Glass would dream up while watching water go down a drain.

The current touring production is the first to include changes made to the Broadway show in 1997 (when most of the cast was replaced). We’re told there are new costumes, a new sound system, and “scenery refurbishment.” All I noticed was that the barricade looks wobblier, but perhaps this is a deliberate effect intended to make the actors seem more daring. All of the principals in the cast are at least adequate, but the opening-night audience gave its loudest applause to eight-year-old James Kuklinski, one of two actors alternating as the revolutionary “pup” Gavroche. Second place went to J.P. Dougherty and Aymee Garcia as the conniving innkeeper Thénardier and his wife, the only comic-relief characters in this grim tale. Dougherty (who has been touring in his role for 10 years!) shines in the bawdy polka-like number “Master of the House,” and Garcia, looking like the Chucky doll of horror-movie fame, held my attention whenever she was on stage.

Proving that musical theater is a small world after all, Jean Valjean is played by Randal Keith, who had the title role in the first touring company of The Phantom of the Opera, which is now the second-longest-running show on Broadway. Keith looks like Rasputin (if not Charles Manson) in the beginning, but his unsentimental take on the character adds to the poignancy of his later scenes. He can handle the high notes of “Bring Him Home,” a requirement that probably eliminates most actors who try for the role. Stephen Bishop, who has played both Gaston and the Beast in Broadway’s Beauty and the Beast, underplays Javert — perhaps too much — so that he’s not a stock villain.

Among the supporting cast, Diana Kaarina is especially appealing as the ill-fated Eponine, the loser in a love triangle involving Valjean’s daughter, Cosette (Stephanie Waters), and the student revolutionary Marius. Kaarina’s rendition of “On My Own” is not the showstopper it could be, but I was taken by her sudden lurch toward the audience in the middle of the song — as if she were trying to escape from the weightiness of the show.

Les Misérables does exhibit a genuine compassion toward the downtrodden, and the show’s popularity hasn’t improved the condition of its beaten-down prisoners and prostitutes. (It’s probably just as well there are no real dance numbers, so the cast doesn’t have to be told to hide its exuberance at being in a hit show.) The bleak set, almost all black and gray, helps to enforce the atmosphere of degradation (though there are a couple of spots — the gate outside Valjean’s house, for example — where it just looks ratty). Things could certainly be worse. At least there aren’t any felines on stage.

Issue Date: April 19-26, 2001