ACT ONE
PROLOGUE: 1815, DIGNE
After 19 years on the chain gang, Jean Valjean finds that the ticket of leave he must display condemns him to be an outcast. Only the Bishop of Digne treats him kindly and Valjean, embittered by years of hardship, repays him by stealing some of the church’s silver. Valjean is caught and brought back by the police, but is astonished when the Bishop lies to the police to save him. With this generous act, Valjean decides to start his life anew.
1823, MONTREUIL-SUR-MER
Eight years have passed and Valjean, having broken his parole and changed his name to Monsieur Madeleine, has become a factory owner and Mayor. One of his workers, Fantine, has a secret illegitimate child. When the other women discover this, they demand her dismissal. Desperate for money to pay for medicines for her daughter, Fantine sells her locket, her hair, and then joins the whores in selling herself. Utterly degraded, she gets into a fight with a prospective customer and is about to be taken to prison by Javert when ‘The Mayor’ arrives and demands she be taken to hospital instead. The Mayor then rescues a man pinned beneath a cart. As a witness to this heroic feat, Javert is reminded of the abnormal strength of convict 24601 Jean Valjean, who, he says, has just been recaptured. Valjean, unable to see an innocent man go to prison, confesses that he is prisoner 24601.
At the hospital, Valjean promises the dying Fantine that he will find and look after her daughter Cosette. Javert arrives to arrest him, but Valjean escapes.
1823, MONTFERMEIL
Cosette, has been lodged with Inn-Keepers, the Thénardiers, who horribly abuse her while indulging their own daughter, Éponine. When Valjean arrives to take Cosette away to Paris, the Thénardiers extort money from him to pay off the debt owed for her lodging.
1832, PARIS
Nine years later, there is unrest in the city due to the likely demise of the popular leader, General Lamarque, the only man left in the government who shows any feeling for the poor. A street-gang led by Thénardier and his wife sets upon Jean Valjean and Cosette. They are rescued by Javert, who does not recognize Valjean until he has gone. The Thénardiers’ daughter Éponine, who is secretly in love with the student Marius, reluctantly agrees to help him find Cosette, with whom he has fallen in love.
News of General Lamarque’s death circulates in the city and a group of politically-minded students stream out into the streets to whip up support for a revolution. Cosette is consumed by thoughts of Marius, with whom she has fallen in love. Éponine brings Marius to Cosette and then prevents an attempt by M. Thénardier’s gang to rob Valjean’s house. Valjean, convinced it was Javert lurking outside his house, tells Cosette they must prepare to flee the country.
ACT TWO
1832, PARIS
The students prepare to build the barricade. Marius, noticing that Éponine has joined the insurrection, sends her away with a letter to Cosette, which is intercepted by Valjean. Éponine decides to rejoin her love at the barricade.
The barricade is built and the revolutionaries defy an army warning to give up or die. Javert is exposed as a police spy. In trying to return to the barricade, Éponine is killed. Valjean arrives at the barricade in search of Marius. He is given the chance to kill Javert but instead lets him go. The students settle down for a night on the barricade and, in the quiet of the night, Valjean prays to God to save Marius. The next day the rebels are all killed. Valjean escapes into the sewers with the unconscious Marius. After meeting M. Thénardier, who is robbing the corpses of the rebels, he comes across Javert once more. He pleads for time to deliver the young man to hospital. Javert lets Valjean go and with his unbending principles of justice having been shattered by Valjean’s own mercy, Javert kills himself. Unaware of the identity of his rescuer, Marius recovers in Cosette’s care. Valjean confesses the truth of his past to Marius and insists he must go away.
At Marius and Cosette’s wedding, the Thénardiers try to blackmail Marius. Thénardier says Cosette’s ‘father’ is a murderer and as proof produces a ring which he stole from a corpse the night the barricade fell. It is Marius’s own ring and he realizes it was Valjean who rescued him that night. Marius and Cosette go to Valjean where Cosette learns for the first time of her own history before the elderly Valjean dies.
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