Profile

The return of Les Misérables after a three-year absence is like an RSVP from someone you’d hoped would be out of town. If A Chorus Line now seems like the ancestor of tell-all reality TV, this is the not-quite-opera that spawned American Idol. With its downstage-center belting, it’s noisy; with its 1,000-plus pages of source material, it’s endless; and with a relentless need to stimulate, it’s exhausting. (At least it’s with us only until April. So we’re told.) Unless you’re one of its die-hard fans—a group much larger than I’d thought—Les Mis now seems interesting mainly on sociological grounds. Though it’s been only nineteen years since the show reached Broadway, the unironic tone makes the spectacle seem closer to Errol Flynn’s time than to our own. Consider the moment when Jean Valjean (Alexander Gemignani, going for the full bewhiskered heroics of the role, with nary a twitch of self-consciousness) assumes a wide wrestler’s stance, squaring off against Inspector Javert (Norm Lewis, who’s surprisingly insubstantial here), the better to hurl counterpoint melodies at one another. There’s no shame in a little sincerity, of course: If you have a pulse, the show’s anthems are bound to quicken it now and then. And there’s fine work from the supporting cast, particularly Aaron Lazar, as the rousing leader of the student rebellion, and young Brian D’Addario, who shows a precocious charisma as the street urchin Gavroche (he’s one of three actors in the role). But there’s no way this compensates for having “Master of the House” lodged in my brain for the next six months. — Jeremy McCarter

Related Stories

New York Magazine Reviews

• Jeremy McCarter's Full Review (11/27/06)