The creative team went back to work. Herbert Kretzmer eventually replaced James Fenton as the English librettist. The creative team, Boublil, Schönberg and Kretzmer as well as Nunn and Caird, returned to the Hugo novel to shape a new hybrid in English.

"What I was engaged in can't in any way be called translation," comments Kretzmer, "A third of the work to be done consisted of a form of translation, a third was free adaptation, with completely new words to existing music, and a third of it involved writing completely new songs."

Says Caird, "We saw it from the start as a very big project, and we knew that the only way we could work on it was to go back to Victor Hugo's book and start again ... We decided to specify and dramatize the wretchedness of the times in order to give some focus to Hugo's anger..."

"I approach the material as if doing a play by Chekhov or Shakespeare," says Nunn, "Nothing is allowed through as a simple matter."

Of the writing process, Boublil says, "It was a real, total collaboration. Not only on the writing but also on the casting process. We really made a new team of writers, and we made a new show."