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Even more remarkable: The Broadway musical has been touring 37 years and still commands sold-out theaters around the globe.

“I think that it’s a show that people recognize. It is a show that people love to see over and over again because it’s something that they know,” says , who has played the lead character Jean Valjean in the tour for the last 6½ years, including the last time it was in Tucson in 2018.

He’ll be back on the Centennial Hall stage Tuesday, Sept. 9 through Sunday, Sept. 14, when brings the show back as a special event for its 20th anniversary season.

Cartell said today’s audiences, much like the ones who saw the show in its mid-1980s infancy, see something in the characters that resonates.

“They can walk into the theater and they know what they’re going to get because these are characters that they see themselves in,” the Phoenix native said in early August as the show was about to take a monthlong summer hiatus. “It is a story that they love to see. It is music that they love to hear. And I think they also can recognize themselves in these characters.”

“Les Misérables,” based on Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel with lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer and music by Claude-Michel Schönberg, is about a French convict who’s trying to pick up the pieces of a life interrupted. But Jean Valjean can’t escape his past nor his former jailer Javert, hot on his trail after Valjean violates his probation.

Valjean has slowly rebuilt his life, assuming the identity of a factory owner and showing kindness to strangers, including Cosette, the young daughter he cares for after her mother dies, and students revolting during the Paris Uprising.

“It’s people that are fighting for a better world. They’re fighting to be heard. They’re fighting to just have a place in this world,” said Cartell.

That message is universal. But Cartell said the show has been able to sustain the test of time because the producers have allowed it to evolve, starting in 1985 when producer brought an English version to the London stage. That show is still running in London, making it the second-longest-running show in history behind “The Fantasticks.”

“I think that the staying power of this show is the fact that it can grow with the generations as it continues to evolve,” said Cartell, who first joined the show a couple of years after Mackintosh incorporated video elements. Those elements were further enhanced on the show’s 25th anniversary in 2011 when Macintosh incorporated author Victor Hugo’s original drawings.

“We’ve gained these beautiful projections, we’ve pushed the boundaries of the storytelling that we’re doing, and we’re really hearkening back to the book a bit more,” said Cartell, the father of a 5-year-old daughter. “We’re really trying to make sure that the storytelling that we’re doing is hopefully deepening not only what you’re seeing within the music, but also what we are trying to express in these characters is the fight that these characters go through in our daily lives, not only in this time period, but what we are going through as a generation, regardless of when this story is being told.”

Many fans of the show will tell you it’s the music that brings them back. There’s “I Dreamed a Dream,” Fantine’s ballad lamenting her fate after losing her job and being forced into prostitution to support her daughter, Cosette; and “Did You Hear the People Sing?” a call for people to stand up against adversity. Other popular songs include “On My Own,” “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables,” Castle In A Cloud,” “Drink With Me” and “A Little Fall of Rain.”

“Les Misérables” runs two hours and 50 minutes and is recommended for children 10 and older. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $40-$185.45 through .