New Yorkers have waited nearly 10 long years for \u201cOne Day More.\u201d<\/p>\n
And starting July 23, they\u2019ll finally be reunited with singing French rebels Jean Valjean, Fantine, Marius and Cosette \u2014 only not at their former longtime stomping, er, marching grounds on Broadway.<\/p>\n
A massive concert version of the ballads-and-barricade musical \u201cLes Miserables\u201d that has toured around the world is wrapping things up a couple blocks away at Radio City Music Hall for 22 performances.<\/p>\n
A massive \u201cLes Miserables\u201d concert is coming to Radio City Music Hall.<\/p>\n
Forty-one-year-old \u201cLes Miz,\u201d with its unapologetically tearjerker tunes by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Sch\u00f6nberg, was a mainstay in NYC for decades. It opened on Broadway in 1987, won the Tony for Best Musical and ran till 2003 at both the Broadway Theatre and the Imperial. There were revivals in 2008 and 2014.<\/p>\n
But this new cast will be masters of a much, much bigger and more famous house.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to do what\u2019s become an iconic concert in the most iconic way,\u201d British producer Cameron Mackintosh told me in London of his splashy Midtown venue choice.<\/p>\n
As much as the Radio City run marks the end of the international event, it\u2019s also a beginning. Mackintosh pointed out that, while American fans are familiar with the show\u2019s huge anniversary concerts from airings on PBS or on YouTube, one has never played the U.S. before.<\/p>\n
Radio City is the first \u2014 and a rather grand kickoff at that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s its own animal,\u201d Mackintosh, 79, said. \u201cNo other show probably could ever do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Producer Cameron Mackintosh said he wanted to do \u201cwhat\u2019s become an iconic concert in the most iconic way.\u201d Dave Benett\/WireImage<\/p>\n
In every way, size matters. There will be 52 actors onstage giving their lungs a workout. They includes a trio of nightly rotating Valjeans (Killian Donnelly, Alfie Boe and Geronimo Rauch) as well as a couple of pursuant Inspector Javerts (Bradley Jaden and Jeremy Secomb) and 27 orchestra musicians at the 5,960-seat venue that\u2019s home to some other \u201cLovely Ladies,\u201d the Rockettes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For those hoping that the spectacle is the first step toward \u201cLes Miz\u201d or \u201cThe Phantom of the Opera\u201d returning to Broadway, don\u2019t get your hopes up. It\u2019ll be a while before tomorrow comes.<\/p>\n
Mackintosh insists he has no plans to bring either of them back, even though both continue to run in London\u2019s West End and \u201cPhantom\u201d is successfully touring the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The producer is put off by the dire financial situation on the Great White Way, with its rapidly escalating costs, and called it \u201ca mess.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s right!\u00a0<\/p>\n
The show includes 52 actors and 27 musicians. <\/p>\n
Unlike his New York counterparts who publicly grin and bear it, and then whisper dourly at cocktail parties, Mackintosh has railed against the disastrous issue of profitability becoming a pipe dream as if he\u2019s Enjolras in \u201cRed and Black.\u201d<\/p>\n
Do we fight for the right to a night at the opera now?!<\/p>\n
When The Post broke the surprise news<\/a> in 2022 that \u201cPhantom\u201d would close, Mackintosh told me at the time<\/a>, \u201cEveryone thinks these shows can go on forever, but you can\u2019t run a big show at these margins anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s true. The number of new Broadway musicals that have recouped over the past five years is in the single digits \u2014 even though, for the most part, barricades and chandeliers have been replaced by folding chairs.<\/p>\n Killian Donnelly is one of three rotating Jean Valjeans.<\/p>\n And while there was loud speculation that Mackintosh would bring a more economical version of \u201cPhantom\u201d back to Broadway, that\u2019s not the case. He\u2019s happy with the tour.<\/p>\n Same goes for \u201cLes Miz.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, his plan was that the recent end of the \u201cLes Miz\u201d national tour (separate from the concert) would allow professional regional theaters to produce the ever popular show for the first time since 2019. Mackintosh wanted to build anticipation.<\/p>\n \u201cI learned from Walt Disney,\u201d he said. \u201cThe magic seven years!\u201d<\/p>\n He added of local professional houses, \u201cThey need the show as well, to do their own versions of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Mackintosh has no plans to bring \u201cLes Miz\u201d or \u201cThe Phantom of the Opera\u201d back to Broadway. Getty Images<\/p>\n Yet there remains a possibility the concert at Radio City, which the producer said is about 90% sold out for the first two weeks and 50% sold for the third so far, could have a longer life in the U.S.<\/p>\n Mackintosh is dreaming a dream, at any rate.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not impossible that I might, in a year or two, take this across America,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s not out of the question. But it\u2019s got to be a big success.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Yorkers have waited nearly 10 long years for \u201cOne Day More.\u201d And starting July 23, they\u2019ll finally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[207,157,8091,9,56,63,65,64,905],"class_list":["post-293999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-broadway","tag-entertainment","tag-musicals","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}