Passions Still Turn the Table

The miserable ones are back, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, nail those high notes and ride that turntable.

“Les Miserables,” certainly the most durable show-business treaty ever signed by the French and the English, greets the new century at the Ahmanson Theatre, where the latest Los Angeles touring engagement continues through Feb. 12. It’s in excellent shape. Producer Cameron Mackintosh and company ensure the quality and consistency of their big-ticket franchises, and “Les Miz” is one of the biggest.

The 1985 show remains the most enjoyable of all the major ‘80s spectaculars, largely because it’s a spectacle at once impressive and mellow. Across one insurrection, two acts and a little more than three hours, “Les Miz” manages to keep its characters--archetypes, but juicy ones--in the foreground. It’s a people show.

It’s a turntable show, too, of course. Designer John Napier’s ever-turning Revolve of History--upon which Victor Hugo’s saints and sinners march, march, march--keeps the highly compressed narrative events spinning, literally. But the design and directorial aesthetics of “Les Miz” never quite cross the line into visual distraction, even with that center-stage Lazy Susan passing ‘round Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert and the rest like so many gravy boats. (In its hilarious spoof of the show, and the not-very-merry-go-round, “Forbidden Broadway” showed less mercy than Javert.)

Hugo’s story was, is and likely always shall be a Populist killer-diller. Poverty-stricken Valjean (Ivan Rutherford) gets 19 years’ imprisonment for stealing a loaf of bread. He breaks his parole, thus handing the ramrod-righteous, obsessive Javert (Stephen Bishop) a lifelong focus for his obsession. With the crucial assist of a kindly bishop, Valjean remakes himself as a God-fearing upstanding man of the people. “Cosette, your father is a saint,” sings Marius (Tim Howar), to Valjean’s adopted daughter in the score’s most unnecessary line of recitative.

Coming off “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby,” co-director Trevor Nunn (then head of the Royal Shakespeare Company, where “Les Miz” was developed) had a few ideas on how to relay fluidly a sprawl of a tale. Nunn and co-director John Caird, along with a first-class design team, don’t exactly work against co-creators Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg. Wisely, though, the staging doesn’t play into the material’s emotional excesses. The score’s occasional Slurpee moments, mostly tied to the young lovers, have been mitigated as tastefully as possible. Nunn and Caird can’t do much about “A Heart Full of Love,” sung by Cosette (Regan Thiel), her beloved Marius (Howar) and the urchin Eponine (Sutton Foster). But the bulk of the score--a mixture of marching songs, drinking songs and lite-arias Sigmund Romberg would’ve envied--fares far better.

The Ahmanson “Les Miz” stint boasts a beefed-up orchestra, additional strings and a harp. Much appreciated. Even in a score trading in a consciously contemporary blend of Now and Then, overreliance on synthesizers tends to turn everything into 1977.

The cast is smooth, well-drilled and very even. Rutherford’s Valjean stays this side of sanctimony, and eases impressively into the character’s aging process. Bishop’s Javert can only do so much to make a one-note guy resonate, but his basso rumble rumbles prettily. As Fantine, the single mother taken under Valjean’s wing, Joan Almedilla scrapes the bottom of her register on the lowest notes, but keeps a skillfully tight reign on the pathos. (I wish, though, that lighting designer David Hersey, whose work is exquisite in the main, didn’t succumb to the pearly-white-beam effect when another saint dies.)

As for the comic-relief grotesques, the Thenardiers, (J.P. Dougherty and Aymee Garcia) whomp ‘n’ stomp the roles but good. I’ve never seen a “Les Miz” wherein these characters didn’t wear out their welcome long before the insurrection. As Enjolras, leader of said insurrection, Kevin Earley sings powerfully but should consider toning down the David Hasselhoff-brand smugness. It gives liberals a bad name.

* “Les Miserables,” Ahmanson Theatre, Music Center of Los Angeles County, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Additional performances: Dec. 23, Dec. 30 and Feb. 10, 2 p.m.; Dec. 20, Dec. 27 and Feb. 7, 8 p.m. No performance Dec. 24; no matinee Dec. 25; no performance Jan. 1. Dec. 31 performance begins at 7 p.m. Ends Feb. 12. $15-$70. (213) 628-2772. Running time: 3 hours, 20 minutes.

Ivan Rutherford: Jean Valjean

Stephen Bishop: Javert

Joan Almedilla: Fantine

Sutton Foster: Eponine

Tim Howar: Marius

Regan Thiel: Cosette

J.P. Dougherty: Thenardier

Aymee Garcia: Madame Thenardier

Kevin Earley: Enjolras

Christopher Carlson, alternating with Cameron Teitelman: Gavroche

Alison Fidel, alternating with Maggie Martinsen: Young Cosette

Trent Blanton: Grantaire

Seth Bowling, Anne Buelteman, Matt Clemens, Stephen Colella, Stephen Paul Cramer, Jerry Jay Cranford, Ben Davis, Nancy L. Foster, Randy Glass, Lisa Howard, Diana Kaarina, Randal Keith, Scott Logsdon, Cornilla Luna, Melissa Minyard, Margaret Nichols, Sarah Ramsey-Duke, Shahara Ray, Jason Reiff, Graham Rowat, Mindy Smoot, Steve Scott Springer: Ensemble

By Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg. Music by Schonberg. Lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer. Original French text by Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel. Additional material by James Fenton. Based on the novel by Victor Hugo. Directed by John Caird and Trevor Nunn. Set by John Napier. Costumes by Andreane Neofitou. Lighting by David Hersey. Orchestration score by John Cameron. Musical supervisor Dale Rieling. Musical director David Andrews Rogers. Sound by Andrew Bruce/Autograph.