A glorious 'Les Misérables: The Arena Concert Spectacular' lives up to its name

An all-star ensemble of global Les Mis alums performs the mega-musical at Radio City Music Hall through August 9 in celebration of its 40th anniversary.

Summary

• Les Misérables: The Arena Concert Spectacular runs at Radio City Music Hall through August 9
• The concert production brings together alums of various global Les Mis productions for the show's 40th anniversary
• The all-around rousing and beautifully sung production features a standout performance from Bradley Jaden as Javert
• Three actors rotate as Jean Valjean and two rotate as Javert

Do you hear the people yearn? Yearn for musicals with lush, massive orchestras? You'll increasingly have to go beyond Broadway to find them, but luckily, only a few blocks beyond. New York City Center's annual Encores! series is all about spotlighting the music, for one, and right now, until August 9, there's Les Misérables: The Arena Concert Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall.

Forty years on from its debut in London's West End, the stage adaptation of Victor Hugo's 1,500-page French book is still one of the most iconic mega-musicals of all time. It's hard to imagine a story so sweeping in scope be told with anything less than production design to match. So it goes that Les Misérables: The Arena Concert Spectacular lives up to its name; it is indeed a spectacle. The performers' faces are blown up onto jumbotrons for the sake of the upper balconies, which more than anything else give the show its "arena concert" feel. There are stylized projections and, at one point, beams of light that shoot out like lasers to suggest gunfire. The actors mostly stand at microphones and sing, but that doesn't mean it's a stagnant staging, what with set pieces descending from above and the 60-odd-person company constantly shifting about. That count includes, by the way, the luscious 26-piece orchestra and the conductor, all fully visible.

Having loved Les Mis for years without having seen a live production of it, this was a glorious first one. The benefit of minimal staging and maximal singing — and Mick Potter's crystal-clear sound design, aided by the venue's Sphere Immersive Sound system — is that you can simply focus on every word and note Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg, and Herbert Kretzmer wrote and remember that, put simply, Les Mis freaking rocks. It's all bangers, no skips, an opinion corroborated by my fellow audience members who gave five mid-show standing ovations throughout.

I joined in for one, and that's no slight to the performers who merited the other four; it's a 3-hour musical, and, as much as I enjoyed every moment, I didn't want the momentum to slow. But I had to commend Bradley Jaden for his no-holds-barred performance of (spoiler) "Javert's Suicide" and revelatory interpretation of Javert more broadly. He plays the moralistic police inspector as more than steely and rigid; there's a wild, even feral glee in his pursuit of Jean Valjean, a more apparent sense that he's not just hunting down the former convict out of piety and self-righteousness, but for the thrill of the chase. We see that thrill lessen as Valjean's redemption gets harder to reconcile, and when Javert sings that his "thoughts fly apart" as he's about to meet his end, his whole body practically flies apart, too, as he completely and utterly crumbles under the weight of his own convictions. Jaden's startlingly physical performance stands in sharp relief to the otherwise contained movement throughout.

The thing is, you only have a 50% chance of seeing Jaden, as he alternates in the role with Jeremy Secomb. Three actors similarly alternate as Valjean: Killian Donnelly, Gerónimo Rauch, and, at my performance, a sturdy-voiced Alfie Boe, who moved me most when he revealed his softer side during the desperate prayer ballad "Bring Him Home." All the principal cast members are alums of various Les Mis productions and, in the case of Samantha Barks, the 2012 movie. (She now plays Fantine, and Shan Ako delivers another standout performance in Barks's film role of Éponine.) This Les Mis is by all accounts an all-star showcase, tailor-made for multiple generations' worth of fans as well as newbies who want the cream of the Les Mis crop.

That's all to say you're in for a rousing, gorgeous evening of music no matter which combination of actors you see. Forget one day more — Les Misérables: The Arena Concert Spectacular is a reminder of why this musical will continue to thrive for one decade more, and another, and another. I already can't wait for the 50th-anniversary concert.

Learn more and get Les Misérables: The Arena Concert Spectacular tickets on New York Theatre Guide. Les Misérables: The Arena Concert Spectacular is at Radio City Music Hall through August 9.

Photo credit: Les Misérables: The Arena Concert Spectacular. (Photos by Daniel Boud and Danny Kaan)