Les Misérables gets a contemporary redesign

The new production of Les Misérables is leaner and more visually ambitious than its 1980 original. Director Ladislas Chollat calls it an evolution rather than a revolution, but the changes are striking enough that the version won a Molière Award for best musical production in France last year.

The shift shows immediately. As Jean Valjean—released after 19 years in prison for stealing bread—enters, projection art envelops the stage, layering dark, etched imagery around the characters. These visual elements, inspired by Gustave Doré's engravings for Dante's Inferno, drift like watermarks throughout, punctuating scenes and marking the passage of nearly 20 years across the plot. The projections carry dates, helping viewers track the story's timeline.

Color arrives through costume and set design rather than projection. The factory where Fantine loses her job glows in indigo tones. Thénardier's inn sits in warm ochre. Fantine's deathbed—where Valjean promises to care for her daughter Cosette—bathes in white. It's deliberate environmental storytelling.

The Quebec production features about 50 performers (16 of them musicians) dressed in a thousand costumes imported from France. Among them: Alex Gaumond, a Québécois actor based in London making his professional French-language musical debut. The production review noted he brings a "just and good" Jean Valjean. Klara Martel-Laroche, known from Quebec television, plays Fantine.

Where the redesign falters is in acting direction. The interpretation stays conventional, sometimes even muting the revolutionary passion and class struggle at Hugo's story's core. Sacrifice and uprising are presented more than felt. Still, the visual reinvention—the projection work especially—lands as a genuine rethinking of how to stage a musical written nearly 50 years ago.