Review: Les Misrables, Bradford Alhambra.

Cameron Mackintosh, the producer, said he wanted his Bradford audiences to leave the theatre feeling they'd seen the definitive performance of Les Miserables.

Success, he said, depended upon the actors possessing the play like none had ever done before.

Certainly, I doubt if anyone left the Alhambra last night feeling like London's poor relations.

The Bradford production of Boublil and Schonberg's masterpiece is, in all important respects, the same as the one which has been packing the West End for the last 13 years.

Mackintosh got where he is - he's the most successful musical producer in the world, by the way - by knowing a great deal about showmanship.

He believes that northerners are entitled to the same standard of production as Londoners, and he's seen to it that that's what they've got.

The scale and technical complexity of the show is quite overwhelming, and its slickness belies sometimes the fact that it's all executed live.

The famous revolving set is a masterpiece of mechanical choreography, yet it is no more than a backdrop to the human emotion which is the heart and soul of Les Miserables.

The production has its roots not in the West End at all but at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where Trevor Nunn's original direction invested in it an elegance and literacy commensurate with Victor Hugo's novel, and a depth far greater than pure music and lyrics.

Hugo himself was deeply impassioned when he wrote of rebellion among the impoverished working classes of early 19th century France. But in truth it is the work of Nunn, Boublil and Schonberg, not Hugo, which has fired the imaginations of the millions around the world who have now seen this remarkable show.

Highlights include the wonderful Master of the House number, Jean Valjean's revelation of his true identity as a fugitive from a chain gang, and, of course, the achingly beautiful lament, Bring Him Home.

John Owen Jones is magnificent as the unjustly imprisoned and ultimately heroic Valjean, as are Cameron Blakely and Joanna Mays as the comical M. and Mme Thenardier.

Les Miserables is in Bradford for a record 12 weeks. See it while it's here, or regret it forever.

David Behrens

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