Thrilling show passes road test

Les Miserables, Lowry, Salford

Once again to the barricades, and not at all a chore.

Having seen this new, 25th anniversary production of the greatest of all modern musicals back in January, I was keen to see if standards were being maintained after eight months on the road.

Lowry ticket holders need not fear: the show is as inch-perfect, thrilling and wondrously drilled as it was in the New Year — not bad for a cast doing seven three-hour shows a week.

Seeing this brilliantly-revised production for the second time helps to enhance appreciation for the terrific moving back-projections of streets and sewers (by set designer Matt Kinley, based on etchings by Victor Hugo himself). When the students do the famous standing-march trick at end of act one, for example, the perspective street-scene behind them recedes.

And when Valjean (the remarkable John Owen-Jones) carries Marius (Gareth Gates) through the sewers, he changes direction to match the perspective of the approaching or receding sewer walls, the result like an image from a dramatic comic book. The effect is cinematic and, seen for the first time, quite magical.

But then the show is all about thrills, passion and energy. Hugo’s massive story, condensed into three hours or so, becomes a rushing whirl of plot, romance, sentiment, conflict and death, and not in that order, in the high-speed redirection of Laurence Connor and James Powell.

The show’s one failing, a lack of character development, is minor in the onslaught of all this power and visual spectacle.

And don’t forget aural spectacle either: John Owen-Jones, Rosalind James as Eponine, Madalena Alberta as Fantine and Valjean’s nemesis, Javert (the dramatically intense Earl Carpenter) offer stunning pleasures as they run through the famous score.

Cameron Mackintosh’s washed and rejuvenated silver-anniversary show has achieved 25 years with ease: with revisions as good as this and casts of this quality, it could easily go for gold.