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The plot sprawls across 17 years, most of them so telescoped that to believe the tale spectators must make leaps of faith. Valjean first appears in chains; released after 19 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread to save his sister's starving child, he remains unrepentant. Given shelter by a bishop, the hardened Valjean robs him, only to be recaptured by police; when the clergyman backs up his false claim that the booty was a gift, Valjean undergoes a moral transformation. He also undergoes a legal one: he destroys his papers, takes a new name and eventually becomes a wealthy man. Twice he risks all to save other men; then, having befriended the dying prostitute Fantine, he once more eludes Javert to devote himself, in hiding, to the welfare of Fantine's child Cosette.
That rapid-fire sequence occupies roughly half of the first act, which is nearly two hours long. The show continues at a pell-mell pace but shifts from incident to soliloquy -- seven characters have long solos, most on a bare stage -- and to grand effects, including a doomed 1832 uprising complete with six tons of barricades, eventually heaped with the bodies of the rebels. The nature of the intended revolution remains more than a little sketchy, as does the alliance that binds together the likes of the streetwise urchin Gavroche (Braden Danner) and the idealistic student Marius (David Bryant), the lover of the grownup Cosette (Judy Kuhn). This lack of ideology may enhance the show's appeal: it taps generalized populist sentiment without bogging down in debate.
Just as the moral center of Hugo's Les Miserables is Valjean, so the driving force of the stage show is Colm Wilkinson. An Irish singer largely untrained as an actor until he originated the role in London, Wilkinson, 43, has a superb pop-rock voice, whether in the assertive Who Am I or the wistful Bring Him Home. Unexpectedly, he encompasses the outsize moral stature of Valjean, making believable both his general saintliness and his outbursts of animal ferocity. Only one other member of the original cast is in the U.S. company: Frances Ruffelle, who as a tomboyish adolescent joins the revolt out of unrequited love for Marius. Many of the other performances rival the West End originals; Randy Graff's splendid Fantine, utterly persuasive when, on her deathbed, she "sees" her absent daughter, is actually an improvement. In three major roles, however, the new ensemble falls far short: Terrence Mann sings Javert impeccably, but in an effort to humanize him, loses his obsessive core; Leo Burmester as the grasping innkeeper Thenardier and Jennifer Butt as his wife are neither scary nor funny, depriving the show of its keenest image of ignobility while also flattening much needed comic romps.