By ALAIN BOUBLIL and CLAUDE-MICHEL SCHONBERG, based on the novel by VICTOR HUGO, with lyrics by HERBERT KRETZMER, music by CLAUDE-MICHEL SCHONBERG, original text by ALAIN BOUBLIL, additional material by JAMES FENTON
The Cameron Mackintosh/Royal Shakespeare Company production
Jeff Leyton (Jean Valjean), Philip Quast (Javert), Meredith Braun (Eponine), Fiona Sinnott (Cosette) Danny Coll (Enjolras), Tony Timberlake (Thenardier), Louise Plowright (Mm. Thenardier), Mike Sterling (Marius), and Ria Jones (Fantine)
Other parts played by Paul Baker, Richard Burman, Matt Dean, David Fawcett, Matthew Gould Allan Hardman, Peter Hilton, Mandy Holliday, Kate Marsden, Mark O'malley, Kenneth Orr, Stephanie Prince, Philip Pritchard, Sarah Ryan, Mitch Sebastian, Rachel Spry, Christopher Steele, Gemma Wardle, Sara West, Andrew Willlianis, Helene Witcombe, Julla Worsley
Directors Trevor Nunn/John Caird
Associate director Ken Ceawell
DAILY TELEGRAPH
18.4.92
Michael Schmidt
Les Miserables, the Cameron Mackintosh musical, has reached Manchester, its way paved by a year of concentrated advance marketing so successful that the long run looks like being big box office. The first night at the Palace Theatre was dogged by technical glitches, but the second went like clockwork, building towards the obligatory standing ovation.
It's this sense of clockwork, from marketing right through production that troubles me even as I admire it. Essentially, the same production can be seen in London, Toronto and on Broadway; only the singers vary.
Ken Caswell is the "Director for Manchester" - not a creative director in the usual sense, more a realiser of this hugely profitable political romance. Delacroix by numbers or (as a French visitor described it) Disney at the barricades.
One can take Les Miserables the musical as rhetorical froth, 1968-style, with cause removed. But this is not Victor Hugo. The lyrics are paralysed by predictable rhymes, subverting the energy of the score. We are presented with revolutionaries but have little sense of what they are rebelling against. Heroism and martyrdom play in a vacuum.
There is a villain, Javert, the jailer and spy who sets out to recapture Jean Valjean, a prisoner who breaks bail and goes on ultimately to beneficent prosperity.
Philip Quast as Javert develops a strong stage presence. He sings with dramatic and melodic conviction. So does Jeff Leyton as Valjean, Ria Jones as Fantine, the unmarried mother reduced to prostitution to support her child Cosette, and Meredith Braun as Eponine, the wild Cupid figure who falls in love with wimpy Marius.
Humour is provided by the gruesome Thernadiers, a Punch-and-Judy couple played by Tony Timberlake and Louise Plowright with the necessary gusto. Corpse-robbers, cheats and thieves, innkeepers and foster parents, they are the unacceptable face of private enterprise.
I wonder if Les Miserables itself is not another such face, colonising Victor Hugo's masterpiece - and French history - with a degree of cynicism. But, judging by the applause, the Manchester audience would not agree.