After performing in five different productions of Les Misérables, Josh Young is finally playing his dream role of Jean Valjean.
Leading a new production at Hudson Valley Shakespeare, Young is putting on the beloved musical with a stunning natural backdrop. At the new outdoor Samuel H. Scripps Theater, audience members are under a grid shell while the cast performs amidst the elements in the open-air. They are draped with gorgeous views of the Hudson River and the peaks of the Hudson Highlands. They’re also treated to sweeping sunsets and vast starry skies that make this Les Mis unlike any production before it.
A Tony Award nominee for Jesus Christ Superstar, Young’s impressive credits also include Amazing Grace, Evita, and West Side Story. He has recorded two solo albums and currently serves as the Endowed Coordinator of Musical Theatre at Missouri State University.
In the heart of his acclaimed run in Les Misérables (which wraps up September 27), Young caught up with me about performing this iconic show in an open-air setting, why fatherhood has shaped his interpretation of Valjean, how teaching musical theater has impacted how he performs, what other bucket list roles he’d like to tackle, and more.
It’s been over 40 years since the musical adaptation of Les Misérables originally premiered and more than 160 years since Victor Hugo’s novel was published. What do you think it is about this story that audiences keep coming back to across generations and different mediums?
I think there are a lot of things. Specifically with the musical, the music is so good. I mean, it’s just so good. This is the fifth separate production of Les Misérables that I’ve been in throughout my life, and it’s my first time playing Jean Valjean. And I’m not sick of it yet, which is crazy! I was just telling some cast members that.
In addition to that, I think there’s at least one character that everybody can relate to. These characters are so well written and diverse. If there’s not a part of somebody that relates to all the characters in the book, I think there’s at least one that they can connect to.
And most people have a thing for justice, and this story is all about justice. I think those are the reasons why it still resonates.
This is the first musical being presented at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival’s new outdoor theater. How do you think the space lends itself to this show, and what are some of the biggest challenges and rewards of performing on an open-air stage?
Even if it were How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, it wouldn’t matter because the backdrop is so gorgeous. It doesn’t matter what show you put there. It’s such a beautiful thing to have the sunset, the mountains, and the river behind you.
It just so happens that a lot of the songs in Les Misérables lend themselves really well to being in nature. We have Denis Lambert, our amazing Javert. He’s beyond fantastic. We have him singing “Stars,” and the stars are literally right there. That’s really cool.
Once, I was doing South Pacific at The Muny in St. Louis while they were also doing Les Mis there with Norm Lewis and Hugh Panaro. Even there, they don’t have nature as the backdrop. The audience is under the stars, but behind the performers is still a traditional theater backdrop. What we have here is nature as our backdrop. It’s like we have the best scenic designer in the world doing it for us.
And again, so much of Les Misérables takes place in nature. When Jean Valjean first comes upon Little Cosette, she’s in the forest fetching water. We have these beautiful trees, and that happens in front of a sunset for us. The battles naturally happen outside, and by the time we get to those scenes, we’re beyond sunset. It just feels right. It feels great.
What do you think this production brings to the story that audiences may not have experienced before? What makes it feel fresh, and what do you hope someone experiencing Les Misérables for the first time walks away with?
I’m very lucky in that this is not the first time I’ve been part of a renowned Shakespeare company doing musicals. I was a two-season member of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada, and one thing Shakespeare companies do really well is focus on the text. That’s the most important thing for them.
It’s no different here at Hudson Valley. Jenn Thompson, our magnificent director, really trusted the text, and we focused on it. People are telling us that there are things they’ve never really noticed before because of that focus. Somebody came up to us and said, “I had no idea Éponine was the Thénardiers’ daughter!”
It’s little things like that that I think sometimes get missed because of the bombast of certain productions. We’re much more intimate, and I think you notice a lot more.
What’s the best piece of advice Jenn Thompson gave you during the rehearsal process?
Oh man! This is interesting because I run the musical theater program at Missouri State, and one thing I always tell my students and really harp on is that you can sing and act at the same time. You’ll sometimes see actors putting little stutters into things to prove that they’re good actors, or they’ll speak or yell some text to prove that they can act. And I’m a big proponent of the idea that you can sing and act at the same time. You don’t have to change things.
There’s a lot of recitative in Les Misérables, and Jenn is more of a proponent of sometimes just speaking it. I have two of my students in the show, so they’re watching me in real time go against my own advice with some of the recitative. We take it out of the music a little bit, so she’s making me break my own rules! But evidently, it’s to great effect because people are enjoying it. I have a former student playing Cosette, and one of my current sophomores is playing Éponine.
Speaking of which, how do you feel teaching has changed the way you perform?
One of the main courses I teach is Acting the Song. And again, because my students are in this production, I have to practice what I preach. I would anyway, of course. But because I repeat these ideas over and over again every day in class, the things that I teach have obviously woven themselves into my own work in a very strong way. I think that perhaps wasn’t there when I was doing this in my twenties, which is when I was playing Marius over and over again in several productions.
Valjean is obviously one of the most iconic roles in musical theater. What went through your mind when you found out you’d finally be stepping into his shoes?
I’ve been wanting to play this role my entire life! And with this particular production, it just really felt like it was meant to be.
Kendra Ekelund is the managing director of Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, and back in October, I wanted to do Les Misérables at Missouri State as a co-production with the Springfield Symphony. I went onto MTI, which licenses the show, and it said the rights weren’t available. But for some reason, they had given the rights to one company I’d never heard of before: Hudson Valley Shakespeare.
So I was like, “Why do they get to do it and I can’t do it?” I got really upset about it! Then I thought, “Well, I’m going to figure out how they got the rights.”
I went onto their website because I wanted to see if I knew anybody, and right there was my college classmate Kendra. We were in the same cohort at Syracuse University, and it’s a small cohort of acting and musical theater majors. I was like, “That is unbelievable.”
I emailed her and said, “Kendra, it’s been 20 years. Let’s hop on a Zoom. I have to pick your brain about something.” I didn’t tell her what I wanted to talk about. I just wanted to know, “How did you get these rights?”
She told me how she got them and that she had some help. And the person who helped her happened to be the producer of Amazing Grace, who had an in with MTI.
While I was talking to her, I was Googling Hudson Valley Shakespeare. Information about their next season came up, and then the new space came up. I saw Les Misérables and these mock-ups of the new space because it hadn’t been completed yet. I was like, “Oh my God!”
So I said, “Hey, I know I called you about this, but what do I have to do to be your Valjean?”
She said she’d pass my name along. But it turned out that before Kendra even passed my name along, Jenn had remembered me from Amazing Grace. Jenn had directed Annie at Madison Square Garden for the producer who had produced Amazing Grace, and during that process, he had brought her to see the show. So Jenn was already like, “I remember Josh from Amazing Grace.” And that’s how I got the gig.
It’s crazy. It really felt meant to be. I knew Hudson Valley was doing the show before anybody else knew because I had done detective work about the rights!
That feels kismet!
Exactly! That’s exactly what I said to Jenn.
Is there anything about your interpretation of Valjean that you think longtime fans of the show, or longtime fans of yours, might be surprised by?
I think I really lean into the love he has for Cosette. There are things I’m realizing that, at least in the interpretations I’ve seen before, are sometimes skipped over. A lot of this is really only for superfans who know the show backwards and forwards.
There’s a moment where he leaves Cosette after the wedding … but I don’t want to ruin anything, so spoiler alert for your audience!
It’s a 200+ year old story. I think we’re okay!
All right! So he doesn’t go to the wedding, and he leaves. There’s a moment where he essentially entrusts his daughter to Marius. And I think it’s often lost on actors, especially actors who don’t have a daughter like I do, that this is the last time he thinks he’s ever going to see his daughter. I really take that into my portrayal. From the moment he meets Cosette, I even add a little joke into their meeting at the well, for instance. I do things like that to strengthen that relationship.
When I leave her for the final time, I think that makes it all the more touching, at least for me as an actor. And then it makes the very last scene so much more heartbreaking because he’s not expecting to ever see her again — and then he does. I’ll leave it there because then there’s a real spoiler!
But I think I lean more into that relationship than most do. A lot of the time, it’s all about Valjean and Javert, right? And a lot of it is. But I think the relationship between Valjean and Cosette is huge, especially in this production.
Plus, it’s great that I had a relationship with this Cosette before because she was my student at Missouri State. We already had a relationship.
Valjean has so many incredible and iconic songs throughout the show. Do you have a favorite to sing each performance?
Before this production, my favorite was the soliloquy he sings at the beginning: “What have I done, sweet Jesus? What have I done?” But with this blocking, it’s definitely not my favorite to sing anymore because I’m doing a lot of physical work during it and using the entire stage. And, spoiler alert, we have an amazing field behind the stage that is also used. So it’s not exactly easy to sing anymore because of all the work I’m doing!
In this production, my favorite song to sing is probably “Bring Him Home,” just because it’s a song I’ve known since I was 12. I was singing along with Colm Wilkinson in the back of my mother’s station wagon. That’s what I was doing! So it’s lived with me for that long. But now that I have my own son and daughter, it’s much more resonant.
You mentioned you’ve been in five different productions of Les Misérables, including playing Marius on the national tour. How did those experiences shape your approach to playing Valjean today?
I don’t think they shaped my approach at all. I think I approached him as a brand-new character. I really did. Again, I looked at what I teach my students in terms of character work and scene work, and I just went back to the very beginning with it.
If anything shaped my portrayal, my biggest idol growing up was Colm Wilkinson. He ended up coming and supporting me when I was at the Stratford Festival because he lives in Canada. He came to the opening nights of my shows there, and then I did a concert with him.
Some of his vocal inflections, whether I like it or not, probably made it into my portrayal. And I’m okay with that because he’s the best. Sorry! He’s the best who has ever played the role, and there never will be anybody as good.
But I don’t think any of the actors I previously did the show with shaped this. When I was playing Marius, I was focused on playing Marius rather than what they were doing. I was focused on responding truthfully to what they were giving me when I was singing with them.
I saw that Hillary Clinton recently posted a photo with you with the caption, “Just commiserating with Jean Valjean about high bread prices.” She went on to talk about how much she “really loved” this new production. What was it like performing for her and then getting that ringing endorsement afterward?
She and her husband loved it, and it was an honor. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing! They were so gracious afterward. They spent about half an hour with the company after the show. Bill Clinton was holding my hand for five minutes, almost crying. He was so moved by the story. I think part of the reason for that is because he has a daughter, and I think he’s gone through some illness. The end of the story probably really resonated with him.
But who gets to sing for a former Secretary of State and a former President? It’s crazy. It was crazy!
There are so many parallels between Les Misérables and the world we’re living in today. It’s a story dealing with themes like poverty, inequality, political unrest, and how we treat people society has discarded. How has working on it during these times resonated differently for you than previous productions?
You know, shit’s always going down around the world. Every time I’ve done this show, I could say there’s been unrest, unfairness, and poor treatment of people around the world. So it’s not really different this time.
People think, “Oh, so much is wrong with the world right now.” It was 20 years ago, too. And it was 200 years ago, too.
Maybe one day we’ll live in a society where everybody is truly equal and treated well and there’s no unfairness. But the reason this story touches a chord with everybody is because, unfortunately, that’s never really been the case. So no, I don’t think it feels different during this time period than it did during those previous productions for those reasons.
Is there a moment in the show that you personally think is underrated?
Oh, yeah. For me, my favorite moment — and again, this plays into the deep relationship that I think Valjean has with Cosette — is when he first meets her. She trusts him to walk her back to the Thénardiers’ inn, and they’re just singing together in this beautiful harmony: “La, la, la…”
That’s my favorite part. You have this man who has been in jail for 20 years, who has gone through all of this crazy stuff in his life, with this pure, innocent little girl who he’s about to take care of for the rest of her life. And he’s promised her dying mother that he will.
Those “la-las” in perfect harmony are just so tender and loving and almost heartbreaking. I think that’s an underrated part of the show.
The production wraps up at the end of September. What can fans expect next from you?
Oh gosh. I’m teaching, and I love teaching. My whole life, all I wanted was to be a father and have a beautiful life in the suburbs, and that’s what I have now. Luckily, my wife wants the same thing.
That being said, when stuff like this comes along, I will gladly say yes. I’m not actively searching for anything because, luckily, Emily [Padgett], my wife, and I have a pretty thriving symphony and concert career, which scratches that itch for us.
But I would love to come back to Hudson Valley Shakespeare and do something. I’ve almost played every role on my bucket list now. There are very few I still want to play, but if a great theater or a great director like Jenn wanted to direct Sweeney Todd, my wife and I would love to do that. Emily and I did a concert version of Sunday in the Park with George. If there were a great production of that, I would also love to play George with her as Dot. And the final show that I haven’t done that I want to do is Fiddler on the Roof, again with my wife as Golde. Those three. So hopefully you’ll see me in one of those three, and hopefully it’ll be here. Who knows?
Before we wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to add or plug that we didn’t talk about?
I just want to plug this amazing theater company again. I think it’s going to grow, and I think it’s going to become a worldwide destination for people in the future. And again, it’s really exciting for me to play a part in my college classmate’s success, which is just—
An extra full-circle moment?
Yeah, exactly! Thank you so much for having me!
CLICK HERE for more details about Les Misérables at Hudson Valley Shakespeare (Garrison, NY), now playing through September 27, 2026.
PHOTOS | T. Charles Erickson