Press packs for large musicals, like the musicals they describe, belong to genre unto itself. Unlike the quiet, almost scholarly press releases that herald the arrival of a straight theatrical work, press packs for musicals are exuberant productions, bursting with newspaper clippings, colour photos and a hyperbolic sense of their own importance. Above all, publicity material for musicals indulges the odd human love of bizarre statistics; the exact amount of crystals in a chandelier, the number of buttons used in the production, or perhaps the total number of times the musical has played in Ulan Bator.
The advance publicity for Les Miserables is no exception, and anybody who usually flunks the Music and Entertainment questions in Trivial Pursuit would be advised to get hold of a copy. There is sheet after sheet of dates, numbers and record-breaking facts about the musical. However, the Les Miserables publicity differs slightly from the usual bumf in that, far from being obscure or trivial, most of these statistics are really very impressive. They prove that the Cameron Mackintosh production of Les Miserables, written by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg and based on the novel by Victor Hugo, has left the realms of contemporary musicals and has become a cultural icon, lodged in the craw of the 20th century. For example, a song from the show, One Day More, was chosen as the official song for Bill Clinton's campaign to become US present (a rather prophetic choice given the current climate of whither Bill).
At the 1996 European Football Championship, the musicians chosen to sing to an audience of 400 million viewers in 197 countries were not Oasis or some other group associated with the laddish culture of footie, but rather 250 cast-members from Les Miserables, or Les Miz, as it has conveniently if rather unglamorously become known.
Since its inception in 1985, Les Miserables has opened in 26 countries including Japan, Czechoslovakia, the Philippines, Singapore, Poland and Iceland; it has been translated into 14 languages from Hungarian to Dutch and to date has played worldwide. There has been a production of Les Miz running in London's West End since it opened in 1985 and one on Broadway since 1987: 28 further companies have at some stage opened around the globe. Ireland is no exception to this multimillion pound success story. When it opened in the Point in 1993, the nine-week run sold out, was seen by more than 150,000 people and grossed more than £3 million, making it the most successful musical ever staged in that theatre.
Now Les Miz is coming back, and from February 26th, Jean Valjean and Fantine, Javert and Cosette will be roaming the stage of the Point, this time for three months. While this might seem sound business sense, it is actually rare for such a large production that has already played to such a high proportion of the musical-going population to return, given the huge expense of transporting and staging the production. Cormac Rennick, the general manager of the Point, admits they weren't immediately interested in staging the production again - until the magic name Colm Wilkinson was mentioned. Wilkinson is, of course, the born-and-bred Dublin man who defined the principal role of Jean Valjean when the show first began in the Royal Shakespeare's Barbican Theatre in 1985. After massive acclaim, the show moved to Broadway in 1987 and Wilkinson went with them. Like Michael Crawford, who will always be identified as the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera, for many Wilkinson is Jean Valjean - he "created" the role and brought it into the spotlight. Nevertheless, since appearing in the original Broadway production in 1987, Wilkinson has agreed to play the role only once, at the one-night-only 10th anniversary concert of Les Miz at the Royal Albert Hall in 1995.
However, unlike the other six current productions of the show - and unlike the last production of Les Miz in Ireland, when the role of Valjean was taken by Scotsman Jeff Leyton - this version in the Point will see Wilkinson once again play the role of Valjean. "When you bring a show like Les Miz back to a city where it's played already, you have to come back with something different," Colin Ingram, production administrator with Cameron Mackintosh, and the individual responsible for bringing this production of Les Miz on tour, explains. "Cameron wanted to bring something different to the Irish return; he wanted to bring Colm back. We also have John Kavanagh and Anita Reeves playing the roles of the Thenardiers" - the comic turn.
Including the two Irish principals already in the production, Peter Corry (Javert) and Alex Sharpe (Eponine), there are five principals: nearly one-third of the cast is Irish. "I think it's important that the Irish show is a tribute to all the Irish actors and actresses that in the 14 years of Les Miz have played a very significant part in the production. It's a real tribute to the standard of talent in Ireland," Ingram says.
The other big difference between the Les Miz last seen in Ireland and the one you can catch from February is not so obvious. It concerns logistics and is, in its own way, ground-breaking. Whereas the last production took several months to get into the Point, set up and rehearse, this one will finish in Liverpool on a Sunday and open in Dublin on a Wednesday or Thursday. "The touring company was very much my baby," explains Ingram. "We opened in Plymouth in May of 1997 with a £3 million production created from scratch. The point of this tour was to take the show from one city to another in a matter of days rather than months."
He is anxious to point out that this did not involve scaling the production down; indeed, in some larger venues such as the Point or Sheffield Arena, where the show will go after Dublin, the production will be larger than it could be in a regular West End theatre. What it did involve was radically reworking both the set itself and the backstage set-up. The famous barricades are now two solid pieces, constructed of wood and aluminium and each home to a stage hand and a nest of machinery. The technicians literally drive the barricade into place. The massive backdrop, the revolving stage - indeed, every part of the production, comes apart in large pieces: it is secured by clips and steel pins rather than nuts and bolts for speedy deconstruction. Even the lighting and sound systems had to change. "We took a page out of the rock 'n' roll rigging where you take the lighting bars off with the lights on them rather than setting up the bars and hanging each lantern. The same goes for the sound rig. We're very much doing what rock concerts have always done."
The US influence continues in the wardrobe department which has been transformed from the more traditional system of dressing rooms to wardrobe villages. After each lightening-quick scene, the 28 characters return to their "homes" within the village where their particular costumes are lined up in order. With some 392 complete costumes, consisting of 1,782 items of clothing and 31 wigs (attention, fact fans), such military precision is vital. Les Miz is the first production to run on this basis in Britain, and Colin Ingrams admits Cameron Mackintosh is looking at applying the same formula to future musical productions. While all the new gismos and gadgets in Les Miz are state-of-the-art, their artistry is in the illusion they create; in themselves, they do not explain the enduring appeal and success of the musical. It's more likely the show's "secret" lies in the combination of a winning tale and music of the most stirring, you'll-be-singing-those-darned-songs-for-a-week variety. The original book, written by Victor Hugo across 1,200 serialised pages in 1862, brought his publisher more than 500,000 francs in the first six years.
Tellingly, a popular version of Les Miserables was brought out by Jules Hetzel three years later to interpret Hugo's unwieldy text for the masses - Hetzel must have been the Mackintosh of his day. The classic story of the underdog and outcasts as embodied by Valjean, the escaped convict who makes good, and the student rebels on the barricades is cunningly intertwined with such tried-and-tested themes as unrequited love, revenge, parental sacrifice, a rags-to-riches conversion and of course a good dose of painful death nobly borne.
Between 20 and 51 films have been made of the book, and it was even, according to one commemorative programme for the show, the inspiration for the Harrison Ford film, The Fugitive. The most recent version, which came out in November, was directed by Danish director Bille August, starred Liam Neeson, Uma Thurman and Geoffrey Rush: despite the fact that August claimed never to have seen the musical, it was launched in London with great banners proclaiming its connection to the "hit musical" of the same name.
So the story itself is one with consistent emotional force and audience appeal, and Boublil and Schonberg's version takes care to milk the opportunities for dramatic tension it affords. Ingram, who has seen the show more times than most, waxes lyrical about the reasons for its success. "The structure of the show is just so good. When you look at the peaks and troughs of suspense and comedy, you see it just works. One of my favourite shows is West Side Story, and you've a very similar structure there. For example in the second half of West Side Story, you've got the scene where Chino is looking for Tony with a gun and at that point you go straight to the funniest song in the show. In Les Miz you've got the same pitches of tension - it's similar to Macbeth and the placing of the Porter scene in a way."
Ingram emphasises the huge importance of the music in the show, which is entirely sung-through in the same way as an opera. "The music is fantastic; it's the kind of music that perhaps isn't as instant as Andrew Lloyd Webber's but people enjoy it more each time they hear it, which is the reason that Les Miz has such huge repeat business."
It is hard to fault the appeal of Les Miserables, a musical that tends to be liked even by those who hate musicals. The songs may be catchy, the plot may remorselessly wring tears out of the audience, the hero may make a noble promise to a prostitute on her death bed, but hey, it works. As Peter Corry, who has played the role of Javert for the past two years, says: "Songs in this show push emotional buttons. You can get all cold about it and say it's just steering the audience towards a mood, but that's what music is all about. This appeals to a mass audience and it's well-written - it's not perfect but then nothing is. If you go by the reaction of the audience, who at the end of the day pay the bills, and they enjoy it, and you enjoy doing it, then it's a good musical."
Les Miserables opens at the Point Theatre on February 26th. Information on 01-8363633