Limited Touring Run of 'Les Misérables' at Playhouse Square is a Melodramatic Gusher

One of the interesting things about seeing a play several (or more) times over the years is how it resonates with the changes you, or the country, or the world are going through.

Take Les Misérables, which your intrepid critic has seen a minimum of nine times. It is based, of course, on the Victor Hugo novel, written more than 150 years ago, about a French peasant and his struggle for redemption, set against the Paris Uprising of 1832.

And yet as you watch it once more at Playhouse Square where a superb touring company is in residence for only a few days, the mind shifts to current events and imminent decisions that could decide all our fates.

As the story goes, Jean Valjean stole a loaf of bread to feed a starving child, served 19 years of hard labor, and breaks his parole to start a new life. But he is mistaken for another man, who is about to go on trial in his stead. Valjean confronts this situation in "Who Am I," a song in which Nick Cartell deploys his powerful tenor voice to mull his dilemma: "If I speak, I am condemned/If I stay silent, I am damned."

While you mull his plight, your thoughts might drift to other situations in our current political climate where people who know the dangers posed by one particular presidential candidate but remain silent, on the sidelines.

Cartell's evocative singing voice in the lead role is well matched to the bass notes of Preston Truman Boyd, who plays Inspector Javert, Valjean's OCD nemesis. Boyd not only sings low, he seems to scrape the ocean bottom when he delivers his two shattering solos: the hopeful (for him): "Stars" and much later his resigned "Soliloquy."

Serving as comedic counterpoint to the testosterone-drenched struggle between Valjean and Javert are the Thénardiers, the hoteliers from hell who "Charge 'em for the lice/Extra for the mice." While Mr. and Mrs T are often portrayed as stout, overstuffed pigs, this version is a deliciously lean and mean pairing which, in the talented hands of Matt Crowle and Victoria Huston-Elem, generates plenty of laughter.

The music (Claude-Michel Schönberg) and lyrics (Herbert Kretzmer) are performed splendidly under the musical direction of Will Curry, which is mandatory in this sung-through masterpiece. As Fantine, Haley Dortch nails the wistful "I Dreamed a Dream."

And Mya Rena Hunter owns the role of Eponine, the spoiled daughter of the Thénardiers who grows up to fall in unrequited love with Marius (Jake David Smith), one of the student revolutionaries. Their Act Two duet "A Little Fall of Rain" leaves nothing to be desired.

Several years ago, the staging of this play was updated, using projections in combination with set pieces to seamlessly move the show from one venue to another. Some of the projections are static backdrops while others glide, forward and back along a street and then from street level down into the sewers of Paris. Those projections (Finn Ross and Fifty-Nine Productions) along with the lighting Paul Constable) set the mood in an instant.

This is particularly true when the students are at the barricade when the jumble of chairs and tables is shot through with crisscrossing beams of light that create a visual tapestry of youthful exuberance and ultimately tragedy.

Yes, under the direction of Lawrence Connor and James Powell, Les Miz is an unapologetic melodramatic gusher. But if you respond to great music and remarkable performances, you really should see it.

Again? Certainly. As the Thénardiers sing in their concluding bleat "Beggars at the Feast:" "Life is easy pickings/If you grab your chance."

Les Misérables
Through September 22 at Playhouse Square, Connor Palace Theater, 1615 Euclid Ave., playhousesquare.org , 216-241-6000.

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