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The time, 1832. The place, Paris. The downtrodden and the intellectual vanguard prepare to man the barricade. "One day more to revolution," they sing in the rousing climactic Act 1 number. Revolution, alas, is temporarily cancelled due to dicky hydraulics in the barricade scenery, and the punters are apologetically sent packing, by no less than Cameron Mackintosh, halfway through the show. Thus the opening night for the northern debut of the world's most popular musical.
Now the gremlins have fled, the show is in its stride and, lo, the barricades move smoothly into place. Manchester is being graced with the biggest version yet of this Trevor Nunn-devised adaptation of Victor Hugo's weighty tome, a prospect that makes Victorian stagecraft look timid by comparison. Since its premiere back in 1985, the already broad strokes of character seem to have got broader in the show's upwardly-mobile impulse to become the mightiest of musical mighties.
Thus Jeff Leyton's bull of an ex-convict and pariah-turned-mayor-turned-fugitive is impossible saintliness itself, and the invidious innkeepers Mme and M Thenardier (Louise Plowright and Tony Timberlake) - great fun though they are, respectively squawking like an affronted parakeet and popping mucus into the sausage mix - come over as marginally less credible than the average pantomime villain. As for the insurgent students, a rollicking band of revolutionaries if ever there was one, they certainly know how to strike a manly attitude cometh the hour, although I was slightly taken aback by the politeness of the exchange of fire between these stout-hearted lads and the troops over the barricade. But they do manage some superbly virile death throes along the way.
Best death of the night, though, was that of the full-throated Philip Quast's holy police chief Javert, who received clamorous applause as he was swept away to a watery doom on one of the stage's ever-busy revolves. It was certainly shorter and sweeter than that of Jean Valjean, a death-bed demise complete with tearful attendants, benign ghostly visitations, celestial floodlights and gushing strings from the orchestra pit. By this time, the audience was ready for the grossest emotional machinations the the show was prepared to contrive, and the ecstatic standing ovation at the end testified that Les Miz' ruthless bid for world domination is almost complete. Resistance is useless.
