‘Les Misérables’ review: Musical returns to NYC in massive Radio City concert

With a musical like “Les Misérables,” as a rule les isn’t more.

It’s a big honkin’ show. Très grand. Set amidst France’s bloody June Rebellion, common sights include smoking muskets, the imposing barricade and, back in the 1980s, voluminous wigs worthy of their own zipcodes.

What informs its physical size, though, isn’t an overzealous designer with a corporate card, but the mega music by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil. 

The spill-your-guts-out songs, which to this day sound like that of no other musical, even its many pop-opera imposters, still hit hard.

A friend of mine in his seventies recently said to me, “I never cry. I didn’t cry when my mother died. But I cried at the original ‘Les Misérables’.” 

That’s this show’s legacy — that a loud group of nineteenth-century French revolutionaries and romantics have been improbably able to reach even the most locked-up hearts for more than 40 years. 

Any staging must stand up to those impassioned, now-canonical ballads such as “On My Own,” “I Dreamed A Dream” and “Bring Home Home” and the thrilling call to arms “One Day More.”  

And so it does at Radio City Music Hall, where “Les Miz” has just returned to New York after nearly a decade away in what’s been called “The Arena Concert Spectacular.”

Yes, this is a huge concert — not a full production. It nonetheless manages to be as rousing as ever.

As the appended title would imply, actors playing Jean Valjean, Javert and Eponine mostly wail into standing microphones. There’s a healthy 34 performers onstage backed by a 26-person orchestra. 

You can hear the people sing, all right.

Of course, they all wear period costumes, not frocks and tuxes, and there is a sizable barricade that the ensemble mans while singing their lungs out.

But conjuring the requisite grandeur as much as the score is Radio City itself — the most important piece of scenery at play. The theater effectively becomes a character, wielding a gravitas that matches the soulful weight of Valjean’s Godly righteousness and Inspector Javert’s merciless law-and-order pursuit of him. 

Everybody knows the venue has a storied association with Broadway thanks to the Tony Awards. But musicals don’t often play there in any form. A recent concert of “The Last 5 Years” was the rare one.

For good reason. Most would get gobbled up and not land past Row F. However, “Miserables” fits it remarkably well, aided by a fancy new sound system modeled after the Sphere in Las Vegas and the piece’s inherent massiveness.  

The “bum bum” of the opening begins, and what starts out as another concert swiftly transports the audience and crumples them up as this musical has always magically done.     

There are three rotating Valjeans (Killian Donnelly, Alfie Boe and Geronimo Rauch) and two menacing Javerts (Bradley Jaden and Jeremy Secomb) who perform on alternating days. I saw the pairing of Donnelly, who’s played the part in the West End, and Jaden.

Donnelly boasts a booming tenor that flattens us with “Bring Him Home.” Yet there’s also a youthful sparkle in his eye that makes him more of a human than a haloed saint. That’s an easy trap as, let’s face it, Valjean even has a Jesus look. 

On Broadway, Donnelly once played Charlie in “Kinky Boots,” which sure ain’t the typical track for Prisoner 24601. Kinda fun.

As the dogged Javert, Jaden is uncommonly spunky. His “Stars” has a real thrust to it, like he’s not only gazing up at the cosmos, but has that “fugitive running” in his crosshairs. 

Jac Yarrow as Marius sensitively sings a wrenching “Empty Chairs and Empty Tables and Christian Mark Gibbs makes a strapping Enjolras. 

I especially appreciated Shan Ako’s take on poor, lovelorn Eponine, which gives the third wheel more grit than usual. “On My Own” always brings tears — a crush so bad it kills her! – yet hers is particularly moving.

Not all is heavenly. Samantha Barks, who Broadway fans will remember from “Pretty Woman,” if they haven’t blocked it out, is rather less effective as Fantine. Her “I Dreamed A Dream” sounds fine, but lacks vulnerability. It comes and goes, much as the character does. 

This musical can’t be made or broken by any one person, though. That’s always been true. Boublil and Schönberg’s construction is too sturdy and its themes too timeless for it be easily knocked down. That’s why it runs and runs around the globe. 

But not here anymore. “Les Misérables” sadly won’t be back on Broadway or in Manhattan for the foreseeable future. Too bad, since our current flock of ‘sicals lacks muscularity. The Radio City concert will be New York fans’ last chance to experience it for a while. 

Don’t fret though — there’s not just “one day more.” You’ve got 12.