Yes, we've avoided some plays just because they're crazy popular, or massive, spectacular musicals, or both. But it turns out that Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil's Les Misérables is a gritty, visceral, and appropriate setting of Victor Hugo's populist novel of pre-Revolutionary France. As emotionally manipulative as E.T., as action-packed as The Fugitive, and as romantic as Wuthering freakin' Heights, it's played more than 10,000 performances in London, won multiple awards, briefly made a star of Susan Boyle -- well, it's awesome, and it's back at Tempe's Gammage Auditorium, in an acclaimed remounting from original überproducer Cameron Mackintosh, for eight shows only, through Sunday, September 16.
Apparently, a film version's in development, so if you're not already entangled in an epic flame war about who should play Éponine or something, it's your last chance to enjoy Lay Miz before pop culture utterly destroys it.
Sept. 11-15, 7:30 p.m.; Sat., Sept. 15, 2 p.m.; Sun., Sept. 16, 1 & 6:30 p.m., 2012
