Cameron Mackintosh first heard the French concept album of Les Miserables in 1982. “I immediately made it my business,” he says now, “to travel to Paris to meet composer Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil who’d adapted the story from the Victor Hugo classic.” Cameron smelt a hit.
But he’s the first to admit its unparalleled and sustained success has exceeded even his wildest dreams. Next week with a special charity gala performance at Shaftesbury Avenue’s Sondheim Theatre, it will celebrate 40 continuous years in the West End, the longest-running production in London with the single exception of The Mousetrap.
A company of nearly 100 performers, including guest artists from the first four decades of Les Mis – Patti LuPone, Michael Ball, Alfie Boe, Samantha Barks, Matt Lucas, Frances Ruffelle, Carrie Hope Fletcher and Bonnie Langford – will join the celebration cast in a special finale.
As it happens, and he’s the first to acknowledge this, Les Mis wasn’t an instant hit. Not with the critics, at least. One critic dubbed it The Glums. “I can remember trying to call the box office the morning after the first night to confirm my worst fears,” says Cameron. “The line was permanently engaged.
“When I finally got through, I was told they’d never had a response like it. The theatre-going public had formed long queues at the box office, the phones were ringing off the hook and 5,000 tickets had already been sold. Truly, we’d created the people’s musical.”
Word of mouth, moreover, had been helped not a little by Joan Bakewell’s vox pop interviews on Newsnight with first-night audience members as they left the theatre. “I shall always be grateful to her,” says Cameron. It ran at the Barbican for eight weeks. When it transferred to the Palace Theatre in the West End, it was sold out.”
Whatsmore, the buzz quickly reached Broadway. By the time the show opened in New York in March 1987, advance bookings totalled a whopping $12million.
Now, Cameron has put together a special company of artists currently performing at the Sondheim until November 1.
Jean Valjean is played by Killian Donnelly (“one of the greatest ever”, in Cameron’s estimation) alongside Bradley Jaden as Javert, Katie Hall as Fantine, the velvet-voiced Jac Yarrow as Marius, Shan Ako as Éponine, Adam Gillen as duplicitous Thénardier with the Elaine Paige of Australian musical theatre, Marina Prior, as his equally self-serving wife.
As a sung-through musical – there are no spoken words – Les Mis boasts a slew of enduring hits, the English lyrics subsequently written by the late Herbert Kretzmer, one-time drama critic of this very newspaper.
Probably the most famous are Bring Him Home, Empty Chairs At Empty Tables and I Dreamed A Dream, given added notoriety when an unknown Susan Boyle sang it on Britain’s Got Talent in April 2009 and it became the most-watched YouTube video of the year with over 120 million viewings.
Michael Ball sang Empty Chairs at his initial audition for the show. “Afterwards director Trevor Nunn asked me if I’d be interested in a non-singing role,” he recalls. “I told him I’d probably better walk away as I was rubbish at stage management.
“He laughed, gave me the first of many ‘Trevings’ – a hug that goes on for a substantial amount of time – and the next day offered me the role of Marius. So began my life-changing journey with Les Mis.”
Michael has a unique perspective on the musical having also played Valjean and Javert at different times. “I recently told Cameron that I was thinking it might soon be the end of my journey with Les Mis. He replied, only partially tongue in cheek: ‘You can always come back to play Thenardier – and then the Bishop.’ And you know what? I might just do that.”
Spend any time with Cameron Mackintosh and it’s impossible not to be caught up in what is tantamount to his boyish enthusiasm. He’ll be 79 on October 17 but, gosh, you wouldn’t know it: he doesn’t look his age, nor does he act it. Mention retirement and he looks at you askance. Indeed, he’s currently busy on a new staging of one of his other big hits, Miss Saigon (another Boublil/Schonberg creation).
He was eight years old when his mother, Diana, (“I get all my energy from her and, as she lived to 103, I hope I’m going to inherit that gene, too”) and aunt took him to see the musical, Salad Days. When he discovered the musical’s lyricist, Julian Slade, was playing in the orchestra pit, he approached him at the end of the show and said how much he’d loved it. Slade then offered to take all three backstage and show them the ropes.
Cameron’s fate was sealed. “Within three months, my ambition was to become a producer, not, as someone suggested, an impresario. I cheekily responded: ‘No, impresarios put on other people’s shows. I want to put on my own.’”
First, though, he had to learn his craft. In the event, he only lasted a year on a stage management course at the Central School of Speech and Drama. “I wasn’t interested in Euripides. I was much keener on Hello, Dolly! So, I went looking for a job.”
Aged 18, he knocked on the stage door of the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. “There was nothing doing until the props manager, a lovely old boy, chased me down the street and said he had a two-week holiday job for £7 a week. I explained I couldn’t live on that.
“So, it was suggested I could also work as a cleaner in the Dress Circle bar. The combined salaries just about paid the rent on two rooms in Half Moon Street which meant I could walk to work and not pay to commute from Muswell Hill.”
Fast forward to 1969 and the 23-year-old Mackintosh staged a production of the Cole Porter musical, Anything Goes, at London’s Saville Theatre. “It was a big flop but then I didn’t know what I was doing. It was also the wrong venue. It taught me a useful lesson: you must cast your theatre as carefully as you do your leading lady.
“Richard Mills, who ran all of Bernard Delfont’s empire, found me crying in the Stalls bar. He told me the show had to close after just two weeks. He said: ‘I’m going to tell you what I once told Bernie. If you get through this, it will teach you so much.’ And it did.”
His bank manager then asked if he had enough to pay the cast salaries. “When I told him I didn’t, he said he’d lend me the money on my signature. Quite a leap of faith but they were different times.”
The bank manager was right. At the height of his success in 1990, Cameron was described as being “the most successful, influential and powerful theatrical producer in the world” by the New York Times. Apart from Les Mis, his shows include The Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Miss Saigon, Mary Poppins, Oliver! and Hamilton. In 1996, he was knighted for services to musical theatre.
All of this, of course, has made him a very wealthy man. The Sunday Times Rich List has put his personal wealth north of £1billion. He shrugs. “Maybe. But that’s not why I do it.”
Ten years ago, it was asserted he’d spent £50million restoring his theatres. He chuckles. “Wrong. It’s £300million – on top of buying them in the first place. The best thing about having money is the freedom it gives you to do what you want.”
He lives very comfortably, he says, with property in London, a 2,000-acre farm in Somerset (“I produce cheese; we have 700 cows”) and the Nevis Estate in the West Highlands. His partner is Australian-born theatre photographer Michael Le Poer Trench. They met at the opening night of a production of Oklahoma! in Adelaide in 1982. Michael is in charge of all the stills photography for Cameron’s shows.
He gives a contented smile. “You’re looking at a man who’s had more fun than is decent, doing the job I love. And I’m planning for all of my shows to carry on way after I’m no longer here. Les Mis is now booking until October 2026, as are Oliver!, Phantom and Hamilton. They are my legacy.”