‘MISERABLES’--A COSTUME OPERETTA THAT WORKS

Even before it gets to New York, “Les Miserables” is the blockbuster theater event of the winter. They lined up for it at the Kennedy Center, where it ended its sold-out break-in engagement last week. They are lining up for it on Broadway, where it opens March 12 (previews begin Saturday). They will line up for it at the L.A. Shubert in a year or so.

And they won’t be disappointed. “Les Miserables” doesn’t set the musical theater forward by one inch. It actually sets it backward, to the days of “The Student Prince” and “The Three Musketeers.” It is costume operetta, with a vengeance.

But it works. For those who want to come out of the theater whistling the songs, they are here. For those who think that a musical should tell a story, there’s 20 years’ worth of story. For those who want big emotions in the theater, these couldn’t be bigger. For those who want to be taken to another world--all aboard.

And even for those unsusceptible, usually, to this sort of thing, there’s a pleasure in yielding to a show that makes its plea so directly. “Les Miserables” doesn’t have an ironic bone in its body. It tackles major emotions head-on, in the great tradition of 19th-Century opera--and Victor Hugo. Even as you smile, you are stirred by its attempt to match the stride of his mighty novel.

Does it succeed in doing so? Not quite. “Les Miserables” is a first-rate costume musical but not a work of genius. Once, though, it does touch inspiration--in the scene where the students of Paris gather at the barricades. Their marching song, “Do You Hear the People Sing,” would put heart into a chipmunk and its preface is almost as stirring:

Red--the blood of angry men!

Black--the dark of ages past!

Red--a world about to dawn!

Black--the night that ends at last.

Hugo would have saluted this. Elsewhere, he might be puzzled by the show’s musical idiom. But it is very familiar to us. It’s no surprise to read in the Kennedy Center program that “Jesus Christ Superstar” was a major influence on the songwriting partners who conceived “Les Miserables” for the Paris stage in 1980, Claude-Michel Schoenberg and Alain Boublil. Their score is cut to the pattern of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “operas”: big, simple melodies linked by punchy bursts of recitative. They don’t have the rasp of the original French--how could they? But they’re literate and singable and they seem more urgent as performed by this largely American cast than they did last season in London.

Of course the place to really see “Les Miserables” would have been Paris. The cast album of that original production has a vitality that’s almost alarming: The listener never forgets that “Les Miserables” is essentially the story of a manhunt.

That fervor is missing in the somewhat tubby English-language version. But the American production, once again staged by Trevor Nunn and John Caird, at least avoids the primness of the London one. The lowlifes in London were from the world of “Oliver!” Here they tend to speak good old brash American--an easier lingo for us to identify with sewer-rat French than the clipped vowels of the English actor.

The Jean Valjean of the American production is English: Colm Wilkinson, who also played the role in London. Wilkinson is a stalwart performer, able to portray a humble man so that we see the strength underneath his humility. As a singer, however, Wilkinson tends to fall into nasal Anthony Newly-isms.

I kept seeing George Hearn in the role.

Valjean’s nemesis, Inspector Javert, is played by an American, Terrence Mann. He shows us the negative, sour-apple side of the character, but he doesn’t convince us that Javert, too, has a spiritual life; that he is as driven and, in his way, as dedicated as Valjean. . . .

I kept seeing George Hearn in the role.

If the two leads are slightly undercast, and the text a little static, where’s the excitement? A lot of it is in the staging. “Les Miserables” lives up to the basic requirement of a theater spectacle. It serves the eye and the ear. Banners wave and rifles crack. Never shall we surrender!

It’s a tableau that Delacroix might have painted, and Michael Maguire is particularly splendid waving that red banner at the top of the heap. The fall of the company is equally picturesque, with the dead sprawling every which way. This may be hokum, but it is real theater, and anyone who doesn’t get a charge out of it has had too much education.

Even more spectacular is the moment when the barrier pulls apart and we are suddenly following Valjean through the sewers of Paris. The transformation owes as much to David Hersey’s dank, steamy lighting as to set designer John Napier’s arches and cobblestones. Again, it relies most of all on the ability of the theater audience to “see” a whole picture with only a few visual clues. The genius is to know what clues to show them. Napier possesses it.

The supporting cast is also sharply individualized. Start with the two children. Donna Vivino as Cosette doesn’t overdo the poor little dear’s plight, and Branden Danner makes Gavroche the equivalent of a tough little newsie in an O. Henry story, breezy and likable. (Naturally he stops a bullet at the barricade.)

The show’s surest-fire number is “Master of the House,” with Leo Burmester and Jennifer Butt as the nastiest innkeepers in Paris. Butt is especially funny in her gap-toothed goofiness--a young Carol Burnett transplanted to Victor Hugo’s Paris.

Randy Graff gives dignity to the fragile prostitute, Fantine, again being careful not to overstate her sad condition. But Frances Ruffelle, also from the London company, falls into self-struck mannerisms as the plucky Eponine. Her big number, “On My Own,” is about being terrific rather than being lonely.

When the national company is formed, it should be an all-American one, so thought might even be given to retranslating some of the lyrics into American English--and to bringing back some of the songs struck from the London production.

One can imagine “Les Miserables” being more taut and racy than it is here. But no musical in a long time has had this kind of grandeur.

LES MISERABLES

A musical, based on Victor Hugo’s novel, at the Kennedy Center, Washington. Music Claude-Michel Schoenberg. Lyrics Herbert Kretzmer. Original French text by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel. Additional material James Fenton. Orchestral score John Cameron. Musical supervision and direction Robert Billig. Sound Andrew Bruce/Autograph. Presented by Cameron Mackintosh. Executive producers Martin McCallum and Richard Jay-Alexander. Casting Johnson-Liff Associates. General management Alan Wasser. Designer John Napier. Lighting David Hersey. Costumes Andreane Neofitou. Directed and adapted by Trevor Nunn and John Caird. With Colm Wilkinson, Terrence Mann, Kevin Marcum, Paul Harmon, Anthony Crivello, John DeWar, Joseph Kolinski, Leo Burmester, David Bryant, Alex Santoriello, Michael Maguire, Jesse Corti, Susan Goodman, John Norman, Norman Large, Marcus Lovett, Steve Shockett, Randy Graff, Cindy Benson, Marcie Shaw, Jane Bodle, Joanna Glushak, Ann Crumb, Kelli James, Frances Ruffelle, Donna Vivino, Chrissie McDonald, Patrick A’Hearn, Branden Danner, Diane Della Piazza, Jordan Leeds, R. D. Robb, Judy Kuhn, Jennifer Butt and Brandy Brown.