Hunchback the Musical

 I didn't post yesterday. It was a long day, and I spent the evening watching a community theatre production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (the stage version of the Disney musical). My best friend played Quasimodo.

In my experience, stage versions of animated hits are a mixed bag. Certainly Julie Taymor's vision lifted Lion King from its animated roots and made it into a theatrical event. (I've not seen it, but its influence is unimpeachable.) Having loved the animated versions of  The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, I was unimpressed with the stage versions. Both seemed bloated with extra songs better left on the cutting room floor.

Frozen onstage--well, at least the soundtrack--enriches the original. I like the extra songs generally (well, the one about "Hygge" I could do without). 

None of these, though, alters the original to the extent that Hunchback does. The movie's Alan Menken (music) and Stephen Schwartz (lyrics) join with playwright Peter Parnell to move the material closer to Victor Hugo's original.

Quasimodo is much less articulate--except when alone alongside the gargoyles and saints (who serve here more as chorus than as fully realized characters). The book clarifies that, as in the novel, Quasi is mostly deaf due to his proximity to the bells. The musical's writers also lean into the narration of the story, expanding the narrator from Clopin's singular song to a leitmotif for the ensemble to fill in details and move the plot along. 

For instance, everyone starts off in white, singing a medievalish Christian chant. Then the cast sings the exposition tune "The Bells of Notre Dame," playing out the back-story of Frollo and Quasimodo's origins. The actor playing Quasi dresses similarly to everyone else and is re-costumed--a prosthetic hump added--as part of that introduction. He becomes Quasimodo before everyone's eyes.

The script and lyrics unfortunately keep the term gypsy for Roma people. It's a confusing choice given how easy it would have been at least to nod to the distinction between the epithet that labels them versus the term they use for themselves. (I wonder if the choice makes sidesteps contemporary issues of Roma standing and integration--relevant given how often the show has played in Europe. Relevant--but not an excuse.)

The biggest change, of course, is the ending. As in Hugo's novel, everyone dies. Quasi swoops down to rescue Esmeralda from the executioner's fire, does his iconic "Sanctuary!" cry (this won applause when I saw it), and carries her to his tower abode--only to have her die in his arms. He then throws Frollo off the tower and into the fire (rather than, as in the cartoon, Notre Dame itself seems to kill him). The wounded Phoebus stumbles in, collapses on Esmeralda's body, weeping. He tries to lift her, fails, cries. Quasimodo lurches out of his own grief to approach him, lay a hand on his head, and lift up his loved one for Phoebus.

The saints and gargoyles of the ensemble surround him and reprise the song "Someday" (an afterthought in the movie, central here), hoping for a better world. Esmeralda, in the white light that is musical convention for "afterlife" walks slowly off stage.

The actor playing Quasi completes the song. He stands tall, turns to regard Esmeralda, doffs his outer costume and prosthetic hump,and rejoins the chorus. 

In the production I saw, the audience is then told (as in Hugo's novel) that in Notre Dame's crypts, people found two skeletons embracing. One was that of a woman, wearing a brightly colored band. The other was a man with a bent spine. When they tried to separate them, the man's skeleton crumbled to dust.

The narration concludes:

 And we wish we could leave you a moral
Like a trinket you hold in your palm

But there's none beyond the "what makes a monster and what makes a man" question.

And that's it! Ballsy. 

The musical never made it to Broadway. It's not the most tightly constructed piece, dramaturgically. The music is fine, the extra songs intriguing (Phoebus is given a bit more PTSD from the Crusades). "God Help the Outcasts" remains the standout song.

I will admit that the melodramatic themes of how to treat immigrants and outsiders rang loudly in a year where many Christian leaders are saying that the greatest sin is empathy. The ending--replacing a miraculous and happy conclusion for a yearning that "someday" things might improve:

Someday, life will be kinder

Love will be blinder

Some new afternoon

Godspeed this bright millennium

Hope lives on

Wish upon the moon

Let it come

One day

Someday

Soon

Amen too, Hunchback of Notre Dame. Amen.