A CURE FOR BROADWAY’S MISERIES?

A prediction for 1987: “Les Miserables” will be the blockbuster that Broadway has been looking for. That’s on the strength of its reception at the Kennedy Center, where it opened last week.

The London critics didn’t particularly admire “Les Miserables,” except for its scale, and David Richards of the Washington Post had to admit that it finally lacked the sublimity of Victor Hugo’s novel. Still, the evening was “an event, and Lord knows the Broadway musical theater has been panting for one.”

For Richards, the show “conquers by the audacity of its ambitions, boldly putting on stage events that you would have thought to be the cinema’s province.

“Designer John Napier achieves stunning effects. . . . Directors Trevor Nunn and John Caird so adroitly employ the theatrical equivalent of dissolves, wipes, tracking shots and closeups that you have the impression you are watching history unfold Hollywood style. Popcorn at intermission wouldn’t be out of place.”

Richards also admired star Colin Wilkinson as Hugo’s embattled hero, Jean Valjean. “That Wilkinson is not simply overwhelmed by the surroundings is a testament to his singular power as a performer. His Valjean is a colossus, but also a creature of delicate sensibilities.”

As for the score (music by Claude-Michel Schonberg, English lyrics by James Fenton), “Barbra Streisand is going to have a terrible time deciding which of the numbers she is going to record,” Richards adds.

“Les Miserables” goes to Broadway in March. If the New York critics are half as enthusiastic--that would be about our percentage, having seen the show in London--it’s in.

A TOAST: Call us Scrooge, but in our opinion, “A Christmas Carol” needs a rest. A holiday toast, then, to the American theaters who are doing something else this year. O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” and Dylan Thomas’ “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” seem to be the most popular alternatives, as well as dramatizations of fairy tales like “The Snow Queen.”

A production we’d like to see: “Beatrix Potter’s Christmas,” an original musical at the Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis. How do they portray Benjamin Bunny? Another good idea: A double bill of the medieval “Second Shepherd’s Play” and Romulus Linney’s “Why the Lord Came to Sand Mountain” at the Delaware Theatre Company in Wilmington. Both have the roughness of the stable. (Linney’s play is now running at the Back Alley Theatre: It’s a beauty.)

The National Theatre of Great Britain’s holiday show is “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” but that’s no surprise. “A Christmas Carol” doesn’t have anywhere near the cachet over there that it does here.

OLD BUSINESS: A recent column on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” in London neglected to mention the name of the young man who wrote the lyrics--Charles Hart, 25. . . Last week’s report on the British Arts Council theater grants (about $40 million) might have set some readers to wondering how much our National Endowment for the Arts gives to the American theater. About $7 million.

PAYING THEIR DUES. The last figure suggests the importance of corporate support for the American theater. A particularly relevant source is the entertainment industry, which gets so much of its talent--actors, directors, designers--from the theater. Some corporations recognize the debt. NBC, for instance, has just given $450,000 to the American College Theatre Festival, to be spread over the next three years. Resident professional theater needs similar underwriting.

ADVICE OF THE WEEK: Laurence Olivier in his new book, “On Acting” (Simon & Schuster: $18.95)--”An audience will encourage you to show the extent of your powers. But once having got you to open your heart, it will eat your entrails. Never take your trousers off.”