STAGE REVIEW : ‘Les Miz’ Barrels Into Town

It’s almost frightening to see how efficiently “Les Miserables” has been replicated for the West Coast at the Shubert Theatre. After nine other productions, the Cameron Mackintosh Organization has indeed got it down to a science.

There had been a problem with the show’s turntable, but everything went right Wednesday night. The barricade glided together like a giant Tinkertoy. The sound system zapped the slightest lyric to the back of the house, with only little less presence than a recording. The cast--mostly young, mostly from the area--seemed thrilled to be at their battle stations.

The show could have taken Normandy, and it had no trouble flattening Wednesday’s first-nighters, who were prepared to be impressed. “Les Miz” is said to have an $8-million advance ticket sale.

Having seen “Les Miz” twice before, your reviewer again admired it as a piece of theater machinery, all the more elegant for not being overly mechanized. If a show like “Starlight Express” points to a time when musicals will be performed by robots, “Les Miz” leaves room for human variability.

But on this trip the heart failed to leap up as the students manned the barricade to the trumpet tones of “Do You Hear the People Sing?,” and one’s eyes remained curiously dry as poor Eponine (Michelle Nicastro) expired in the arms of gallant Marius (Reece Holland)--no offense to either.

The thought even occurred that Jean Valjean (William Solo, from the Boston company) doesn’t actually have much of a problem in the show once his faithful enemy Javert (Jeff McCarthy) has left the scene. Why not tell Cosette (Karen Fineman) his past and be done with it? Certainly no man ever had a more understanding daughter.

Now this is not the proper mood in which to watch “Les Miserables.” One’s first mistake was to start reading Hugo’s novel. It’s such a fascinating and far-ranging book that no stage adaptation could encompass it, not even if it lasted as long as “Nicholas Nickleby” (from whose staging co-directors Trevor Nunn and John Caird have done some self-borrowing).

“Les Miz” takes a mere 3 1/2 hours to perform, and it’s like playing the story on fast-forward. Here’s Jean Valjean on the chain gang. Zip. Now he’s mayor. Zip. Now he’s an old man. Zip.

Next to the real thing, this is Classic Comics. Avoid the real thing, reader, until you’ve caught the show.

It also doesn’t help to have seen the show elsewhere. That’s not a reflection on the cast, which has more energy than the London company and more individuality than the Broadway company, besides having strong singers. If they were a bit too concentrated on selling their performances on opening night, they’ll become closer friends with their characters as the run proceeds.

Scenically, though, this “Les Miz” is somewhat less than it has been under other roofs. The transition from the barricades to the sewers ought to be stunning--a movie dissolve magically brought to the stage. At the Shubert, it’s a nice effect, but you don’t feel yourself plunged into a dank space with God-knows-what stumbling towards you from the end of the tunnel. Has John Napier’s set been cut down for the road?

The basic problem, however, is that while some musicals grow richer on repeated viewings. “Les Miz” doesn’t. It loses its purchase on the emotions after three or four hearings, possibly because it tries so hard to command them.

Operas do go for the viscera, of course, and “Les Miz” deserves to be called an opera. But composer Claude-Michel Schonberg is of the Andrew Lloyd Webber school, where every aria has its hook and every musical line is spelled out, to the point where the first-time listener can’t possibly lose his way and the long-time listener gets a bit impatient.

It is, to a fault, the kind of musical where the audience finds itself humming the tunes on the way out of the theater, a natural result of having heard them sung in so many different contexts. (The prison chant, “Look Down, Look Down” becoming inspector Javert’s theme, for instance.)

Accessible? Yes. Cloying? That, too, especially with lyrics that keep telling the listener what to feel, rather than setting up an image and tiptoeing away, as an old master like Irving Berlin does. Herbert Kretzmer’s English lyrics come from the head more often than they do from the heart, which is fine for the comedy songs (“Master of the House” with Kay Cole and Gary Beach as those crooks the Thenardiers) but not so good when somebody is on her deathbed.

Enough carping, however. First-timers may very well find this “Les Miz” absolutely the big Broadway musical they have been craving ever since “Cats” closed. The cast certainly isn’t skeptical about the material, and there were moments Wednesday night when even a disinvolved spectator was caught by a performer’s ardor--Solo, for instance, in Valjean’s prayer for Marius, “Bring Him Home.”

Jeff McCarthy’s Javert has stature, too, although the piece never makes it clear what’s up with Javert. It’s also possible to take Elinore O’Connell seriously as Fantine, the prostitute who dies wondering what’s going to happen to her little girl: no applause-mongering here, just a solid belief in the character.

Congratulations, too, to young Josh C. Williams as the street urchin, Gavroche, a part that has seen some really obnoxious child-star performances. Here, you’re actually sorry to see the little brat go.

Plays at the Shubert Theatre in Century City, Tuesdays through Sundays at 8 p.m., with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:30 p.m., indefinitely. Tickets $27.50-$45. Student tickets available Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, for $1; (800) 233-3123.

‘LES MISERABLES’

A musical version of Victor Hugo’s novel, at the Shubert Theatre. Authors Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg. Music Schonberg. Lyrics Herbert Kretzmer. Original French text Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natal. Additional material James Fenton. Orchestral score John Cameron. Production musical supervisor Robert Billig. Musical director John David Scott. Sound Jonathan Deans/Autograph. Producer Cameron Mackintosh. Directed and adapted by Trevor Nunn and John Caird. Associate director and executive producer Richard Jay-Alexander. Executive producer Martin McCallum. Casting Johnson-Liff and Zerman. General management Alan Wasser. Designer John Napier. Costumes Andreane Neofitou. Lighting David Hersey. With Eydie Alyson, Gary Barker, Gary Beach, Jordan Bennett, Greg Blanchard, Tim Bowman, Stephen Breithaupt, Amick Byram, Kay Cole, Kenny D’Aquilla, Sally Dworsky, Karen Fineman, Joshua Finkel, Tom Flynn, Peter Gantenbein, Phillip Glasser, Reece Holland, Thomas Keeling, Jessica Ann Lightbourn, Jeff McCarthy, Kimberly McCullough, Marsha Mercant, Lisa Michelson, Michelle Nicastro, Elinore O’Connell, Tina Paradiso, Betty Pattengale, Hollis Resnik, Ellen Rockne, Anne Marie Runolfsson, Raymond Saar, Wayne Scherzer, William Solo, Amanda Jo Steppe, Alice M. Vienneau, Josh C. Williams, Bruce Winant.