Our third revival on this trip, was Les Misérables, which we saw last night back here in New York. This show comes back to Broadway without having been closed the amount of time that it would usually take for a revival to happen, but the producer, Cameron McKintosh, decided to have it mounted for a limited run of six months by the same directors, John Caird and Trevor Nunn, who staged the original productions. I suspect that if the show is doing good business, at the time that the six month limited engagement is up, the run might become open-ended.
It’s been a while since I saw the production and seeing it last night was like going back a week after I had seen it last. I pretty much remembered the staging as it was basically the same production with very minor changes. The major difference this time around was the cast.
First of all there is some color blind casting with a black ‘Javert’ and a Latin ‘Fantine’. Norm Lewis plays ‘Javert’ and his portrayal is a bit different from others that I’ve seen. His voice is brilliant, like the others, but there is an element that he has added that makes the character more human. Most ‘Javert’s’ have come across as unfeeling and with only one goal in mind. Lewis’ ‘Javert’ makes you feel his drive but also his questioning. When other actors playing ‘Javert’ jump off of that bridge, it’s hard to believe that it’s because they are conflicted because that is something that you don’t see that throughout. One actually feels sorry for this character at certain points in the musical and better understands his dilemma.
The most controversial bit of casting is that of Daphne Rubin-Vega as ‘Fantine’. There is no doubt that she is a competent actress, having been nominated for a Tony for originating the role of ‘Mimi’ in “Rent” on Broadway, but the question in this production concerns her singing voice. It’s different from any ‘Fantine’ that I’ve heard, in either live performance or on stage. I’m not as questioning about her voice as others have been, because after all she is dying and the choice for this actress seems to be that this is something that she has decided to hint at from the very beginning of the musical. There are lyrical qualities in her voice, as we can tell at times during the show, but this is not the way she has chosen to sing this character. Most ‘Fantines’ are bright and lyrical throughout their short time on the stage and then all of a sudden they up and die having developed consumption in the very last few minutes of the performance. As ‘Fantine’ has never been that major of a character for me during her twenty minutes on stage, I did not have some of the problems that others have had with the performance of Ms. Rubin-Vega.
Of course what would Les Misérables be without ‘Jean Valjean’? I originally saw Alexander Gemignani in Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins in the role of ‘John Hinkley’ and he followed that up in last year’s revival of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. My initial reaction to hearing of his playing ‘Jean Valjean’ was to wonder if he had the chops to pull it off. ‘Hinkley’ was a very light character and his portrayal of ‘The Beadle’ was brilliant but very different from would be required in Les Misérables. There is no question that Mr. Gemignani rose to the challenge. His ‘Valjean’ was strong and forceful when needed and soft and caring during the tender moments. His ‘Bring Him Home’ was flawless and was one of the main reasons that Nico made the comment, after the show, that she would love to have a CD of this cast, if they were to ever produce a recording of this production since this is probably one of the most recorded musicals ever.
On the comic side, the ‘Thenardiers’ (the Dickensian crook-couple who make their living by conning other people) were excellent in this production. ‘Thenardier’ was played by Gary Beach, who we last saw as the cross-dressing Director in The Producers and his wife was played by Jenny Galloway, whose Cockney interpretation is just right. They were both excellent. It doesn’t hurth that they have some great scenes, but they played them to the hilt.
The cast is smaller than the Original Broadway or London casts but that did not take away from the power of the performances to pull this show off effectively. It was good to go back and see this production and to know that it continues to hold up well. New audiences to Les Misérables will get to see what the fuss has been all about over these many years.
