Exclusive | Les Miserables is coming to Radio City but dont expect to see it on Broadway anytime soon

New Yorkers have waited nearly 10 long years for “One Day More.”And starting July 23, they’ll finally be reunited with singing French rebels Jean Valjean, Fantine, Marius and Cosette — only not at their former longtime stomping, er, marching grounds on Broadway.A massive concert version of the ballads-and-barricade musical “Les Miserables” that has toured around the world is wrapping things up a couple blocks away at Radio City Music Hall for 22 performances.Forty-one-year-old “Les Miz,” with its unapologetically tearjerker tunes by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg, was a mainstay in NYC for decades.It opened on Broadway in 1987, won the Tony for Best Musical and ran till 2003 at both the Broadway Theatre and the Imperial.

There were revivals in 2008 and 2014.But this new cast will be masters of a much, much bigger and more famous house.“I wanted to do what’s become an iconic concert in the most iconic way,” British producer Cameron Mackintosh told me in London of his splashy Midtown venue choice.As much as the Radio City run marks the end of the international event, it’s also a beginning.Mackintosh pointed out that, while American fans are familiar with the show’s huge anniversary concerts from airings on PBS or on YouTube, one has never played the U.S.

before.Radio City is the first — and a rather grand kickoff at that.“It’s its own animal,” Mackintosh, 79, said.“No other show probably could ever do it.”In every way, size matters.

There will be 52 actors onstage giving their lungs a workout.They includes a trio of nightly rotating Valjeans (Killian Donnelly, Alfie Boe and Geronimo Rauch) as well as a couple of pursuant Inspector Javerts (Bradley Dean and Jeremy Secomb) and 27 orchestra musicians at the 5,960-seat venue that’s home to some other “Lovely Ladies,” the Rockettes. For those hoping that the spectacle is the first step toward “Les Miz” or “The Phantom of the Opera” returning to Broadway, ...