And yet against all odds, Page elicits at least a little sympathy for this seeming monster of a man, a fact that’s crucial to making the show work. Of course, he decides it’s she who must be purified in a “Hellfire” (the title of Frollo’s disturbingly stirring signature number). As his righteousness curdles into lunatic cruelty over carnal feelings for Esmeralda (whose hated Gypsy heritage makes her particularly forbidden), Frollo becomes like a one-man black hole, sucking away Paris’ light and life. The show’s center of gravity (with a capital G), though, lies in Page’s intensely affecting portrayal of the tormented Frollo. His pain and longing find powerful voice on the gently hopeful “Out There” and the despairing 11 o’clock number “Made of Stone,” one of several songs that are new since the movie. But “Hunchback” is the rare such show that actually earns its grandeur, thanks mostly to the far-from-cartoonish humanity of its central characters.Īrden’s sensitively drawn Quasimodo is a shambling heartache - “half-formed,” as his name (cruelly bestowed by Frollo) translates, but fully aware of how his appearance shocks people. It would be easy for a musical with such boldfaced, full-throated emotions to turn bombastic. The eventual romantic quadrangle (pretty much a literal square-off) among Frollo, Quasimodo, Esmeralda and the newly arrived young Army captain Phoebus (Andrew Samonsky) unfolds amid the rough-hewn splendor of Alexander Dodge’s set, which for much of the show is a cutaway of the massive cathedral circa 1482. Peter Parnell’s elegantly revised book not only restores Frollo to the church (the film made him a minister of justice) but gives him much stronger family and emotional ties to Quasimodo, the unlovely and unloved child whom he takes in as a perceived test from God. premiere - particularly the unholy desire that develops in the pious archdeacon Frollo (Patrick Page) for the free-spirited Gypsy Esmeralda (Ciara Reneé).
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Passions only lightly probed in the movie are fully fleshed out in this U.S. Under the direction of Scott Schwartz, the Playhouse’s potent musical “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” - a revamped version of a show that ran in Berlin for three years - reaches back deeply into the Gothic complexity of Victor Hugo’s original 1831 novel. Where: La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Theatre, 2910 La Jolla Village Drive (UC San Diego campus) I’m happy to say my movie memory was mostly wiped clean on Sunday night the moment Michael Arden strode onstage at La Jolla Playhouse and, with a few quick swipes of makeup and a slip-on hunch, transformed himself into the stooped Quasimodo.īehind him, church bells the size of Buicks descended from the ceiling, as the show’s cast and San Diego’s own SACRA/PROFANA choral ensemble united in one massive, house-rattling voice.Īnd like Quasimodo, the bell-toller who was spirited inside the towering spires of Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral as a baby, those poor orphaned songs from the movie suddenly were ringing out in a far more enchanting and dramatic place. (Just two words on that topic: Farting gargoyles.)Īt least that’s how I seem to recall it. That was the cartoon movie with soaring songs by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Stephen Schwartz and a kid-minded script that mostly messed up the spaces in between. Both ghastly and captivating, an odd blend of the misshapen and the magnetic - yes, Disney’s 1996 feature “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” was one unusual creature.