40 years ago Cameron Mackintosh, together with the RSC and a team of industry-leading creatives took a show penned by Alain Boublil and Claude Michel Schönberg (which had already been seen by half a million people across 100 performances in Paris) and turned it into an almost overnight sensation. Following lukewarm press reviews for the London premiere, Mackintosh famously tried to call the Barbican Box Office to ask about ticket sales, only to find that the phone had been ringing off the hook all morning because they couldn’t keep up with demand for seats.
‘Les Mis’ has gone on to become a global phenomenon and remains the longest running musical in London’s West End, and its English lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer have been translated into many languages for numerous productions across the world. Little wonder, then, that Mackintosh has reserved the performance rights for so long, and until now the only non-professional performances permitted have been of an adapted version for youth and schools groups.
To celebrate four decades of the show’s success, Mackintosh and Music Theatre International have sanctioned 11 amateur productions of the show in the UK this year under the banner ‘Let The People Sing’, the first of which was in Belfast in March, with the project concluding in August in Bristol and Brighton. To acknowledge the scale of the undertaking and the fact that so many people would want to take part, the stipulation has been that each production must be a collaboration of several amateur groups, enabling as many as possible to have a role in it.
Thus it fell to Birkenhead Operatic Society Trust to collaborate with Liverpool Empire’s Creative Learning Department, along with Stockport’s Romily Operatic Society and Wrexham-based Tip Top Productions. Together, they have brought together a team that can fill the Empire’s vast stage not once, but twice over.
Each performance (three evenings plus one matinee) features an onstage cast of 68, but almost double this number of players take part over the three day run, with only four of them appearing in all four shows. The rest are divided into Team Victor and Team Hugo. I attended the Saturday Matinee, which featured Team Victor, who had already played Thursday evening.
Those playing four shows are Gareth Smith and Gary Jones as Jean Valjean and Javert, plus Will Goodwin as Enjolras and, remarkably, young Brodie Gene Robson as Gavroche. On Saturday Afternoon (and Thursday) they were joined by Scarlett Bailey and Meg Borlasse as the child versions of Cosette and Eponine, and by Connor J Ryan as Marius, Tony Prince and Beverley Ann Ross as the Thenardiers, Jennifer Swanepoel and Annie Howarth as Fantine and Cosette, and Isabel Cosgrove as Eponine.
Les Misérables is an epic show built around a series of huge ensemble scenes, but it is also full of big, showstopping solos for many of the principals. The style of vocal writing along with the entirely sung-through format requires both big, assured voices and pin-sharp delivery, and it is impossible to point to a single member of the cast who would not be able to hold their own on any professional stage. More than that, each of them have made the characters very much their own, taking such well known songs and giving them full voice while putting some of their own character into their readings. I don’t intend to single out any individual from those listed above, because every one of them gave an outstanding performance.
Meanwhile, it looks very much as though director James Lacey-Kiggins and movement director Lucy Kinsella have followed the time-honoured tradition of giving every member of the supporting cast a back-story to inform their performances, because they move both as a crowd and as individuals, with all the ensemble scenes played for maximum dramatic effect. A snapshot taken at any moment in the action would make a perfect tableau.
Lacey-Kiggins himself has been a busy sort, having also overseen production design, including work on the sets, costume and wigs, all of which come together under Aaron Dootson’s dramatic lighting to not only fill the Empire’s enormous stage but also to spill out across the orchestra pit. And that orchestra pit contains a very fine group of musicians under the direction of Paul Lawton and Trish Gaskell, while sound designer Alex Linney succeeds in balancing the orchestra and ensemble voices with all the many solos, large and small, so that not a word of the text is lost amongst the overall landscape of sound.
It seems that Cameron Mackintosh has shown another flash of genius in suggesting that groups club together to co-produce these shows, because the collaborative approach has elevated the work of four extremely fine companies, who consistently produce quality in their own right, into something even greater than the sum of its parts. The result is a production that is nothing short of magnificent in every respect, and is an absolute tribute to everyone involved in bringing it to the stage.
The only thing that differentiates this group of artists with those who do it professionally is the financial model under which they approach it. The fact that this is something they are doing alongside a ‘day-job’ and for no recompense apart from the adulation of the curtain call, makes the quality of their work all the more remarkable.
In the Empire Theatre’s 100th birthday year, this must be one of, if not the greatest highlight of the programme. It is a genuinely astonishing piece of work that the cast and creative team deserve to be extremely proud of. If the forthcoming productions in this 40th anniversary project in Swansea, Bristol and Brighton are anything like a match for this one (and I am sure they will be) then audiences there are in for a treat.
The 'Team Victor' cast of Les Miserables - Picture by Brian Roberts
Star rating: 5 stars
This review was originally written for publication by Good News Liverpool
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