Gareth Gates as Marius and Katie Hall as Cosette - Photo: Michael Le Poer Trench

The commemorations offer London audiences the unique occasion to see "Les Mis" in both its original version (the show was created with an English cast from the French text by Alain Boublil and Jean-March Natel, adapted by Trevor Nunn and John Caird), still playing at the Queen's Theater, and this revisiting, at the Barbican Theater, where the musical opened in 1987. Paris is the only city the show will visit outside of England, but don't be fooled by the short tour: "Les Mis" is a total treat.

Back when he was director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Nunn famously described the show's project in this way to the home crowd at the Barbican: "We're going to do a musical show and it's got ‘miserables' in the title. It's got 29 onstage deaths, its being presented by a Shakespeare company, its about French history and there are no dance routines, no tap shoes, no fishnets, no chimney sweeps, no cowboys, no wizards."  Nothing, in other words, like the feel-good, dancing musicals he referenced; nothing to make it a success.

What does make "Les Miserables" such a hit, of course, is Hugo's thrilling novel: the lifelong cat and mouse pursuit of Valjean by Javert, the Cinderella tale of Cosette, the July 1832 revolution in Paris, the devil-may-care street smarts of scrappy Gavroche. Never has a musical had such a story behind it. And while musicals are synonymous with comedy, "Les Misérables" breaks the mold with Hugo's searing commentary on the social injustices of his day and his portrait of the city's indigent and oppressed. The conflict he depicts between basic human needs and aspirations on the one hand, and the imperatives of social order, on the other, embodied by Valjean, gives the musical, like the novel, its soul.

This production is noteworthy for its very revamping; tinkering with success is a risky business, the adage goes, but Mackintosh has found the right formula: the best of the old (original text and original music, by Claude-Michel Shönberg,) and an excellent new vision, under the direction of Laurence Connor and James Powell. If "Les Miserables" has been criticized in the pasts for being rather too epic, too huge, too weighty as a musical, this production is not only faster and smoother, but visually stunning.

Kinley's set builds on Hugo's masterful pictorial vision (the novelist was also a talented painter whose tableaux prefigure 20th century Expressionism) to evoke a mythical, moody Paris while using projections of these to lend the show depth of space and time. The highlight comes with the novel's climatic scene, with Valjean's descent into the city sewers...

What kind of justice condemns a man to 19 years of hard labor for stealing bread to feed a starving child? That a musical can ask a question as important as this, yet never leave its audience behind, is testament to a great work. The new "Les Mis" may not have the toe-tapping, show stoppers, but it certainly does make you feel good - for spending time in the company of these extraordinary characters, brought to life by a movingly human and exquisitely talented cast.

In English with French subtitles. To July 4,Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri, 8 pm, Sat/Sun, 3 pm & 8 pm, Théâtre du Châtelet, 1 place du Châtelet, 1e, Mº  Châtelet, 10 euros-98 euros, tel: 01.40.28.28.40. 

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