Les Misérables The Staged Concert – At The Cinema

Bradley Jaden in Les Miserable The Staged Concert. Picture: Matt Murphy

Les Misérables The Staged Concert live and as live at the cinema.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Thirty-four years after being Les Misérables’ first Marius, Michael Ball played Inspector Javert “probably for the last time” in the staged concert version which went live into cinemas nationally on 2 December and “as live” six days later.

The concert was a brilliant concept to fill the 11-week gap between the show’s enforced closing at the refurbishing Queen’s in July and reopening the new Sondheim Theatre (formerly the Queen’s) on 19 December. It enabled the decades-long Les Mis run to extend until who knows when. Bookings are already being taken up to October 2020.

In a moving speech at the end of the concert, Ball introduced Bradley Jaden, who had just played Enjolras, as the new Javert.

Jaden donned a similar coat to Ball’s to signify the changing of the guard while Ball reminisced about all the young Gavroches, Cosettes and Eponines he had seen and worked with in those 34 years who had matured and gone on to successful careers.

Composer Claude-Michel Schönberg also came on with producer Cameron Mackintosh in a memorable climax to the evening, and with 94-year-old Herbert Kretzmer, who wrote the English lyrics from the original French text by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel, in the final-night audience, the show had a wonderful family feel to it.

Recalling the boyish Ball as student leader Marius back in 1985, Mackintosh reflected it had taken a long time for him to become old enough to play Javert!

With the great Alfie Boe as the wrongly-jailed Jean Valjean (is there any number in the history of musicals more remembered than 24601?) and his mate Ball as the ever-pursuing law enforcer Javert in the main roles, this was always going to be a musical feast.

The horrors of what Russell Crowe did to the Javert songs in the movie – the last Les Mis I had seen – were thankfully immediately forgotten.

The genius of this show lies in the way the hysterically funny panto-style scenes involving the nauseating innkeeper Thénardier and his horrible wife are woven into Victor Hugo’s story otherwise devoid of humour.

‘Master of the House’ is as rude as ever and must rank among the finest comic songs in musical theatre history. This production had Matt Lucas and Katy Secombe at their OTT incomparable best. Gerard Carey and Josefina Gabrielle are taking over the Thénardiers in the Les Misérables for the 21st century just opening at the Sondheim.

The mind boggles at what the make-up department is going to do with one of the great beauties of the London stage in former ballerina Gabrielle. It is truly a bold piece of casting.

There are inevitably pluses and minuses in seeing Les Mis at the cinema. The seats are a lot more comfortable (well, they are in my Everyman) and cost a lot less. You don’t have to duck and dive behind the 6ft 5in giant directly in front of you in order to get an unhindered view of what you’ve paid a small fortune to see in the theatre – and the lifesize close-ups of the actors’ expressions add considerably to the experience.

But you lose the sense of occasion and the sense that they are doing it all just for you that comes with the experience of theatregoing.

And of course there’s no clapping, no applauding, you hear only the warmth of the reception given by the theatre audience. True, there’s nothing stopping you but it just doesn’t happen, at least not on the occasions I’ve been there.

Musical Theatre Review’s Tom Martland gave the staged concert a five-star rave when he saw it at the theatre last month. With so many unforgettable songs and a tumultuous story, it’s a hard show to knock even if some early critics did. Michael Radcliffe of The Observer called it “witless and synthetic entertainment”. Win some, lose some …

Jeremy Chapman

Tickets for Les Misérables are available HERE.