Forty years ago, the Royal Shakespeare Company had the audacity to create a musical out of Victor Hugo’s classic 1,200-page novel, Les Misérables.
It did not take long for the show to become a commercial success in London’s West End and on Broadway. In fact, it is currently the sixth-longest running show in Broadway history, having logged 6,680 performances of its original production.
For its 25th anniversary, Les Miz — as it is popularly called — got a facelift, new direction from Laurence Connor and James Powell and a new scenic design inspired by the paintings of Hugo. That is the production playing at the Kravis Center this week, the umpteenth visit of the show. If you’ve never seen the show before, you were probably not trying.
While I still prefer the cinematic sweep of Trevor Nunn and John Caird’s original direction on John Napier’s concentric revolving stages, the makeover still manages to pack a dramatic and emotional wallop. Yes, it is three hours long and has more tangents and characters than advisable, but this overstuffed tale of social struggle, revolution and romance remains a great evening of theater.
Like Hugo’s 1862 novel, at its core is the saga of petty thief Jean Valjean, who reinvents himself and prospers as a town mayor, yet remains obsessively hunted by police inspector Javert. Along the way, Valjean adopts Cosette, the daughter of Fantine, a deceased factory worker he once wronged. Cosette grows up and falls in love with Marius, a leader of the student uprising that spills over into the streets of Paris.
There’s more, but what sets this show apart from so many other rambling literary works is how well French adapters Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil have compressed the narrative and told it almost entirely in song. Add in the nimble, urgent lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer, a former theater critic, and you have a sprawling portrait of 19th-century France’s haves and have-nots that even your high school English teacher would endorse.
The large cast does thrilling justice to the soaring score, led by standout performances by the two male leads, Randy Jeter (Valjean) and Nick Rehberger (Javert). The former comes on strong from the start with a bold rendering of his statement of identity (“Who Am I?”) and then late in the show delivers “Bring Him Home” with a sweet, clear upper register. Similarly, Rehberger makes the most of his two solos, “Stars” and “Soliloquy.” Other memorable numbers in Schönberg’s operatic score include Lindsay Heather Pearce’s forceful delivery of Fantine’s want song, “I Dreamed a Dream,” the student revolutionaries’ first act finale, “One Day More,” and the plaintive pop ballad of unrequited love by Éponine (Mya Rena Hunter), “On My Own.”
As a painter, Hugo should probably not quit his day job, but the murky images inspired the animated projections by Finn Ross, most notably in Valjean’s escape through the Parisian sewers. The production is visually dark, though illuminated by dramatic shafts of light by designer Paule Constable.
Many mega-musicals, like Sweeney Todd or the imminent return to Broadway of Phantom of the Opera, have downsized in their subsequent productions. To a lesser extent, so has this version of Les Misérables, yet it remains an epic experience, well worth a return visit or a viewing for the first time.
LES MISÉRABLES, Kravis Center, Dreyfoos Hall, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach. Through Sunday, April 27. Call 561-832-7469 or visit kravis.org.