Review by Simon Jenner, August 13 2025
40 years of Bubil & Schonberg’s Les Misérables in English, and producer Cameron Mackintosh (and Music Theatre International) has released Let The People Sing! Eleven amateur productions are released around the country and this is the final leg: Brighton Theatre Group, directed till August 23rd by Michael Burnie and Jodie Michele, and producer Keith Shepherd.
At a time of shrinking resources, when even the National Theatre is making cuts, the need for community theatre to nurture and showcase talent is needed like never before! That’s the therapy, but the artistry is as exhilarating as the very revolution at the heart of Les Mis.
It’s a venture in collaboration with Brighton & Hove Operatic Society, The Rattonians and Worthing Musical Theatre Company. BTG, known for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in 2019, Shrek 2022, Oliver 2024, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory 2025 have taken on the most ambitious “once-in-a-generation” challenge. The hype isn’t wrong.
Even for this group, it’s a stupendous undertaking running for 12 performances. In every detail the people shine: in performance, production or detail equalling and in a few mesmerising tweaks even capping the West End! It’s outstanding.
Carl Lovejoy and Lucia Romero Clark. Photo Credit: Miles Davies
Victor Hugo’s 1862 masterpiece has produced many adaptations, but this is the iconic distillation, produced in 53 different languages and seen by 130 million people. Several thousand more will have seen it by the time this production ends. It’s already nearly sold out.
There’s a couple of adult alternates in titles roles, Jean Valjean taken on this occasion by James Harrington (otherwise Craig Whitley) and Thénadier on this occasion by Carl Lovejoy who’s produced some outstanding performances in the past year (Willy Wonka for example, and in Oh What a Lovely War), and Wain Douglas.
Everything in this production speaks quality as the curtain rises on a lowering blue-grey rain in 1815 and a chain gang. A ship looms so vast it’s about to crash into the stalls.
Harrington’s entry, released from the chain gang is guttural and he refuses the easy lyricism that might sound winning. He’s spluttering with Jean Valjean’s rage at the injustice of his sentence (19 years for stealing bread to feed his starving sister’s family) and Harrington only eases this after he’s encountered the Bishop of Digne (Mike Mackenzie, also Facuelevant), who sings with affect and dignity a version of what becomes Empty Chairs’ later. Several ties you double-take, recalling how songs are partially recycled like Wagnerian leitmotifs. Not because they were running out of them.
Harrington though commands as he rises to his full stature, encountering Amie De Valero Bragg’s Fantine. She’s at first in a fight with Hannah Garred’s spirited spiky Factory Girl and brusque Foreman Adam Collins. There’s a viscerally nasty (thus excellent) turn from Philip Lloyd Davies’ bullying dandy Bamataboios, who thinks he can buy Fantine. De Valero Bragg blossoms in ‘I Dreamed a Dream’, making Fantine at once soaring and fragile, in contrast with her daughter, who’s never had to starve after Valjean rescues her. De Valero Bragg’s return later with Mitzi Tullet’s Eponine, to consummate the almost sacramental finale.
Wayne Roberts’ Javert barrelling a burnished, snarling baritone, is Nemesis incarnate, though whose nemesis is whose, is a matter for Javert to decide. Roberts scores through the singing like the bass-line he is, inky-black on occasion and raging against the light, each word falling like a chain or tombstone on the living. His fall is miraculous: you’ll have to see it. But… in a moment I’ve never seen before, he moves through the shattered barricade and comes across Gavroche. What happens is heart-stopping. As is earlier, Gavroche’s picking up Eponene’s fallen cap. More on Gavroche later.
Wayne Roberts, Carl Lovejoy and Lucia Romero Clark. Photo Credit: Miles Davies
Max Jenkins’ Marius is both ardently lyrical and yet fragile by design: he’s no burly confident youth but a privileged young man out of his depth (like the students he’s never wielded a rifle) and absolutely believable. A Marius tailored for truth. No more so than his ‘Empty Chairs’, as Jenkins hobbles on with a stick, still recovering. Theatre gold.
The woman one feels he ought to love though, Mitzi Tullet’s Eponine is easily the most affecting and tragic of all. In love with Marius she undertakes hazardous missions as go-between carrying letters from Marius to Cosette. Her ‘On My Own’, performed against glistering streets and sometimes the environs of the Valjean residence (No. 55), is easily the most eye-moistening moment. Tullet is wonderful, looks and acts with total conviction. The entire audience cheer as if they want to give her a collective hug
The student ensemble are spirited but also intensely moving: Jacy De Sousa, James Kiley, Jesse Librack-Balroop, James Beniston, Rio Jacques, Asher Starr, Lenny Hannam sing with Jenkins and ensemble the tremendous rallying song for the June 1832 insurrection (the one that almost succeeded, not the 1830 Revolution). Chris Brown’s leader Enjolras is the stentorian lead here and sings with cut-through, almost heldentenor fearlessness. ‘One Day More’ brings more than the house down, with the towering barricade set, lighting and red flag late raised to heroic tragedy.
Lovejoy and Lucia Romero Clark (Nancy in Oliver!, Mrs Gloop in Charlie) are striking in ‘Master Of The House’ where Lovejoy skirls out the words in a sprach manner at times, though lyricism and power are abundant when not characterising even more grittily than the standard West End performance. It’s individual and Romero Clark caps Lovejoy’s truculent self-congratulations (“but there’s not much there!”) with a scouring soprano as queen of the inn. They’re fantastically shameless. And watch for the spoons. You’ll see.
Nina Hayward’s Cosette owns a different quality to Tullet’s spirited yet sorrowful Eponine, and Fantine’s fragility. Hayward is a pure lyric soprano, unclouded and radiant with major-key certainty: absolutely right for the young heroine, even if we root for Eponine too. Hayward’s duets with Jenkins are some of the most tenderly realised duets here, alongside those with Harrington.
The band conducted by Dan Lacey might be too numerous to mention but their small solos, the overall heft and keyboard work (switching to harpsichord and organ mode on occasion) is true pit band standard. Punchy and idiomatic. It’s also extremely clear and the sound design by Ben Lawrance (and Dan Barnes, with effects by Rob Piatt) allows everything in this production to sing out. You can hear the band’s individual strands: you can hear the words of every singer.
Joe Wailes’ lighting is notable for the way the cues fan in and out on an individual figure, tracking them in complex cross-hatching and circles, subtling effects, rendering each scene different. The glare of noon, flare of the fire-lit inn, dark of rain-drenched streets, grim tenebrous crowds and some marvellously detailed video backdrops – as well as the curtain.
The set (Pop Hire Scotland, Scenic Projects Ltd, Sam Forbes) is remarkable for detail and scope: how each large mass is moved on, off and stashed till next time is a miracle of backstage device. Selection and co-ordination though must be to the directors’ and producer’s credit. Shout out for fight director Ollie Wray too.
There’s winning performances from Team Paris on this occasion: Aaryan Willmott as a stunning Gavroche who commands the stage, and deserves every accolade going for one so young. His alacrity sand cheek, his cut-through voice are things that surely mark him out for future roles. Fine performance from Little Cosette (Juliette Mitchell-Gears) and Young Eponine (Georgia Burns) and well as Harley Hill and Matilda Suttey.
Harrington has risen by now to command the stage. His ‘Bring Him Home’ with its stratospheric prayer is spine-tingling. And his final quintet with the shades of Eponine and Fantine (his spirit wife so to speak) alongside the happily united couple is where you know an outstanding production has landed. It only remains for the entire company to sing ‘One Day More’ and we hope it’ll be many. There’s not enough adjectives left to praise this near three-hour epic. But there is a verb phrase: see it!
There’s fine ensemble work from Thénardier’s thuggish Gang: James Tourle, James Armstrong, Jack West, Lee Durnford. And the ensemble are truly worth listing. Jacqueline Anderson, Mair Arditti, Calum Avery, Archie Brooks, Tegan Brown-Felpts, Shannon Carter, Pail Charlton, Nathan Charman, Tany Cleary, Adam Collins, Aaron Coomer, Anna Coote, Ellie Earl, Hannah Etherington, Rosa Farrington, Hannah Garred, Natasha Gild, Ella Grabsky, Jessica Griffiths, George Hannington, Justin Hillier, Adam Holland, Katherine Johnson-Miller, Nick Jordan, Maya Kihara, Ruben Langley, Jane Ledsom, Freddie Lyons, Mike Mackenzie, Elouise Mockler, Kiarnie Camp, Mabel Moon, Sian Preece, Naomi Quinn, Grace Riach, Pandora Seymour, Mia Skipper, Cooper Snow, Helen Snow, George Stathakis, Rob Stevens, Isobel Stoner, Warren Tait, Nyx Thompson, Marcus Truman, Lamorna Webb, Talia Wenstone, Josh White, Phoebe White, Hannah Williams, Emily Wright, Karen Young.
Amie De Valero Bragg, Nina Hayward, James Harrington, Max Jenkins, and Mitzi Tullett. Photo Credit: Miles Davies
