The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
‘Les Miserable’ making return to Cleveland
Epic musical returns to Playhouse Square for lengthy stay (Are you humming ‘Master of the House’ yet?)
Matt Kinley was charged with the job of helping to reinvent the staging of the musical juggernaut.
“Les Miserables” is a sprawling epic with myriad characters. Here the company performs “One Day More.”
The English-language version of the musical “Les Miserables” has been with us since 1985, spawning multiple productions and massive tours along the way. ¶ And while it is still an epic musical interpretation of French author Victor Hugo’s sprawling story involving multiple characters, anchored by the pursuit of escaped convict Jean Valjean by police Inspector Javert, with passing years comes inevitable evolution. ¶ “It’s constantly evolving,” says Matt Kinley, the show’s image and set designer, during a recent phone interview from the London area to promote its upcoming return to Playhouse Square in Cleveland. “Every time we do the show, we make changes, make amendments.”
One of the key changes, at least as far as touring productions overseen by Cameron Mackintosh — a British producer whose name is synonymous with “Les Miserables” — are concerned, came at the end of the last decade.
For logistical reasons and as a way to celebrate the show’s 25th anniversary, Mackintosh and other powers-that-be chose to reinvent the show’s staging, traditionally done with a revolving stage that allowed for the quick moving of set pieces on and off the stage so story settings could be changed frequently.
He calls the original staging “impregnable in its simplicity,” and thus finding an alternative was no small task.
“It very much kind of gave me a nervous breakdown, it did,” he says. “It was almost the end of me before we started.”
He notes that the music was composed in conjunction with conception of the original staging.
“What happens when you come to redo that is the music doesn’t change but the staging does,” Kinley says. “It was a huge challenge in that regard.”
He describes his solution as “filmic.” Along with more traditional movements of set pieces, paintings produced by Hugo himself would be used to help establish moods and locations.
“You want to be telling the story in a simple way,” he says. “We did it in the most tourable, efficient way we could.”
Cleveland saw this staging when Playhouse Square hosted “Les Miserables” a few years ago and will again during its run Oct. 30 through Nov. 18 at the Connor Palace.
“It was a way of telling a story in an impressionistic way,” Kinley says. “It wasn’t literal — it was gonna be smudgy.
“We need to get a sense of where we are without being explicit.”
It may look a bit different, but, rest assured, all those classic songs from Claude Michel Schönberg are there, from first-act powerhouses “At the End of the Day,” “I Dreamed a Dream,” “Master of the House,” “Stars” and “One More Day” to “On My Own,” “Drink With Me,” “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” and the finale, “Do You Hear the People Sing.” And, in fact, Kinley says a guiding principle was to ensure the projected images didn’t fight for the audience’s’ attention with what at times are very dense lyrics. Simplicity usually won out.
“The music is gorgeous,” he says. “It always touches a great deal of people.”
While “Les Miz,” as the show is commonly called, keeps him busy — a new touring production in the United Kingdom is underway, he says, and when he’s in the U.S. he tries to check in on the tour — much of his attention is on a new production of the musical “Sunset Boulevard” in Brazil.
He’s confident “Les Miserables” and his visuals are in good hands with the touring company.
“We always say it’s like a moving painting,” he says, “and if it looks like that in Cleveland, we’ll have done our job.”