Musical Theatre / Les Miserables, Queanbeyan Players. At The Q, Queanbeyan, until June 6. Reviewed by BILL STEPHENS.

Set in 19^th century France, Les Miserables has been running continuously on the West End in London since 1985.

Despite numerous productions around the world, audiences never seem to tire of the epic scale of its uplifting story nor of  the glorious score in which every song is a classic.

Although Canberra audiences have been treated to quite a few productions of this musical over the years, there are many reasons why this newest production by Queanbeyan Players deserves your attention, not least the intriguing concept for the production by first-time director, Dale Rheynolds.

Rheynolds has conceived a production in what you don’t see is almost as important as what you do, embracing a colourless set design by David Abbie which first appears deceptively simple, but surprises with its flexibility.

The brilliant lighting design by Zac Harvey hides set changes behind walls of light, which miraculously don’t blind the viewer, but allow subsidiary characters and ensemble to appear and disappear through the shadows while keeping the storytellers clearly in focus.

To enhance her beautifully staged set-pieces Rheynolds relies on Helen McIntyre’s resourceful costuming to provide colour, and Belinda Hassal’s imaginative movement direction to keep the stage alive with well-executed group movement.

It is obvious that the production has required a huge team effort from the company and Rheynolds has marshalled her resources wisely to achieve fully committed performances from her large cast.

Being a fully sung-through show Les Miserables requires huge musical resources to do justice to Schonberg’s glorious score.  Musical director Brigid Cummins has assembled a first-rate team of musicians, conducted by Jen Hinton, who are certainly up to the task. However, there were moments where essential lyrics were lost in the mix. Hopefully this can be rectified in future performances because in a sung-through show, clarity of lyrics is essential.

In an excellent cast, both Dave Smith (Jean Valjean) and Max Gambale (Javert) appeared to be struggling vocally, no doubt due to a strenuous rehearsal week leading up to opening night.

However, both gave superb performances in their roles, and both deservedly earned cheers for their renditions of Stars (Javert) and Bring Him Home (Smith) as did Jess Waterhouse as Fantine for I Dreamed a Dream and India Cornwell for On My Own (Eponine).

There were excellent performances aplenty in this cast though, particularly from Sophie Hope-White (Cosette), Alexander Unikowski ( Marius) and  William Allington (Enjolas).

Queanbeyan Players have achieved a high-water mark with this inventive production of a musical classic.