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The Hunchback of Notre Dame in Concert (Prince Edward Theatre, West End) - ★★★ REVIEW
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- [00:00]
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- [01:01]
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- [01:32]
Mickey Jo
I do feel I should let you know the Hunchback of Notre Dame remains my favorite Disney film. It was my favourite during childhood. It is, to my mind, the strongest Disney score and that I hope offers a little bit of insight into why. Perhaps surprisingly, as I watched this concert production over the weekend, I found myself quasi disappointed. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you're listening to this review on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I'm obsessed with all things theatre. I'm a professional theatre critic and a content creator here on social media and today I'm going to be letting you know what I thought of the recent concert production of the musical the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The stage adaptation of the Disney film from the 1990s, and despite the film being beloved and its stage adaptation being hugely anticipated and long awaited by UK audiences, this was actually the first time the show has in any capacity been professionally produced in the uk. We have had amateur productions, we have had brilliant student productions, it's been been done in small theatres, it has been done in churches. But now for the first time, it has also been done in London's West End at the Prince Edward Theatre for three performances only over two weekends. And I saw the final performance in the second weekend, which is why it's taken me so long to talk about it. But talk about it I shall. And not just the concert itself and its performances, but also my thoughts on the adaptation of this material. Because for those of you who are only familiar with the Hunchback of Notre Dame film, which is largely also my perspective, though I have read the bits of the Victor Hugo novel upon which it is based, I did not finish the thing. You may be surprised to learn that there are some not insignificant changes, especially to the early parts of the narrative changes we're going to talk about in this full review. Now, seeing as I perhaps have a controversial opinion about that one, I think now more than ever I would love to know what everyone else thought. Please weigh in in the comments section down below with all of your thoughts about the Hunchback of Notre Dame in concert. If you had the opportunity to see it, and if you have seen the show on stage elsewhere around the world previously, let us know about that product. Finally, if you enjoy listening to this review and want to hear more from me, make sure to follow me on podcast platforms or subscribe right here on YouTube and turn on channel notifications so that YouTube lets you know every time I share a new review of a show in the West End or on Broadway. For now though, let's talk all about the Hunchback of Notre Dame in concert. So since this concert production is what I'm reviewing, I'm going to talk about that first before I continue with my thoughts about the material. A little bit of context about this production. Like I said, three performances over two weekends at the Prince Edward Theatre in London, a theatre currently occupied by MJ the Musical, meaning that any concert that was produced here on a Sunday, a day when that theatre is dark, represents a herculean effort of collaboration between production and creatives and the company. Essentially, they have remarkably little time within the space to get everything right, and if there were sound problems at the first performance, by the time that they got to the second weekend of performances, I didn't notice any. I thought it sounded pretty fantastic and it looked pretty fantastic. And the whole thing was sharp in terms of its technical cues. It. It was slick, it was professional. Far too often we see these concert productions with too little technical rehearsal resulting, more often than not, in a show which is a mess, a show that we can't hear properly or we can't see properly. And I have sat here on more than one occasion and told you about a concert production that has gone awry. Exactly like that. But this was not one of those times. And in truth, I trust Jack Maple when it comes to these slick, classy concert stagings. And inevitably, the thing that audiences, myself included, really wanted when it came to the Hunchback of Notre Dame in concert, was the opportunity to hear this lush and rapturous score performed by a sumptuous orchestra with a gorgeous full choir. The orchestration for the show and for the material was in fact, expanded from the licensed version in conjunction with musical director Alan Williams. And the result, I thought, was really resplendent. It sounded impactful and powerful. It was booming and it was heavenly. And it invoked the epic quality of those surroundings. You're never, I think, going to achieve quite the same magical quality of reverb as if you were going to perform it in an actual church setting. And I want to shout out David Hornberger as well, who was the orchestra fixer. I feel like either orchestra fixers are very rarely credited, or if they are, I don't mention them nearly enough. An orchestra fixer is somebody who is responsible for recruiting, for hiring all of the different members of the orchestra. We talk a lot about casting because, you know, we get to experience those performances a little more specifically and individually, but we only really encounter the orchestra as an ensemble, as a collective sound, and they sound it brilliant. Honestly, it makes you miss the days when West End and Broadway shows had orchestras that were anywhere near that size and that quality. But I digress. As I mentioned, we have had many stage musical concerts recently in London. They have been getting a little bit rarer, which has been welcome because at one point there were just far too many, and the market was more than a little bit oversaturated. But a trend that has been happening is very much a movement away from the concept of standing at music stands and just performing the material. They have increasingly become more and more semi staged, some of them fully staged. And in terms of the level of production here, which was directed by Jonathan o' Boyle and choreographed by Mark Smith, the whole thing was Pretty fully staged. There were a couple of church pew benches that were rotated around and moved into different configurations and at one point stood upright to represent a pyre upon which Esmeralda was going to be burned. Spoiler alert. It gets dark. And we had the occasional moment of dance choreography and nobody was holding a script. Everyone was naturally interacting with each other and moving around the space in a directed character, characterful way. There were also moments where it was clear to us that what we were watching was a limited concert staging. Because if somebody's going to get pushed off of a rooftop, then essentially they're just going to walk a few paces backwards to the back of the stage area. There are also an unfortunate number of moments within the Hunchback of Notre Dame where somebody has to be chased off stage. There are many references to fire, and we weren't really capable of managing any of that. I liked the way it was costumed because it was suggested costuming with modern dress elements, but, you know, just enough to suspend our disbelief and allow us to see them as these characters without going all out on the costuming, which I think would have been a mistake anyway, because then it would have made the set or the lack thereof look more conspicuous. The costuming was the work of Alice McNicholas. I particularly enjoyed Esmeralda's, like, boohoo. New bombshell has entered the villa. Love island two piece that she had going on with the top and the sleeves and the skirt. I liked Frollo's little capelet that he had over a nice. Just contemporary, like going to a nice dinner outfit. There were a lot of capes. Actually, now that I mentioned, it was a. It was a big day for capes. Now. Jamie Platt did the lighting. I enjoyed the lighting design. There were some really triumphant moments. Hellfire stands out in my mind as this really epic moment of lighting on the stage. It was a little bit puzzling. We had these sort of like honeycomb reminiscent lighting fixtures with a little bit of an orange glow coming through. Not entirely unlike the one behind my head back there, but specifically hexagonal. And it was really invoking the honeycombs and beekeeping. Were there bees in Notre Dame cathedral in the 15th century? Had they bees? I don't think they had bees. And I'm willing to be corrected here with regards to the bees, but it just wasn't giving me hunchback. And at the end of the day, they're in a theater on the set of mj. But what we really needed, what we really wanted, I think if nothing else visually was some sort of a stained glass window or a stained glass window lighting effect. Put a nice gobo on a lighting rig somewhere. And they may not have had the opportunity even to do that because I don't know to what extent they were able to adjust the existing lighting rig and lighting design that MJ has in place. But I personally just find it very difficult to really enjoy a performance of a song like God Help the Outcasts without the stained glass lighting effects flooding onto the stage. I do think it would have made a difference to the atmosphere of the whole thing. Now it's worth pointing out, though I've spoken about it at length already, that the concert was somewhat overshadowed by a little bit of conversation happening externally about the casting of Quasimodo and what this reignited in terms of talking about the lack of representation and opportunity for disabled performers. My enduring thoughts about which and you can go and listen to my full and extended nuanced conversation about this if you are very intrigued and you haven't had the chance to already, are that the role as it is written is something of a paradox. And this was put very brilliantly in a comment to that video that I shared talking about the casting, highlighting that the way in which the character is written and the specificity of his disability are inherently sort of at odds with each other. And that's not me saying that it's unreasonable to expect a disabled performer or a disabled character to be able to do the things that Quasimodo does in the show. It's literally examples of the writing contradicting itself, because not only does he need to be an accomplished high tenor singing this hugely vocally demanding score while also being described as mostly deaf, but he's also criticized to his face by another character in the show, Phoebus, who tells him that he can barely speak, which is not something that we experience of Quasimodo at any point during the show that never manifests. And different productions over the years have taken different approaches to represent Quasimodo's disability and this paradoxical nature of his character on stage, often incorporating the duality of two different performers in order to represent this idea and his inner self and the way that he is seen by the world. With this concert production, dual casting the role of Quasimodo with Ben Joyce and Oliver hewing, with Ben as an able bodied performer performing all of the dialogue and the song material and Oliver as a young deaf dancer existing on stage alongside him and performing interpretive choreography inspired by but not exactly replicating British Sign language, which has been choreographed by the wonderful Mark Smith. Now, I may talk about this a little bit more when I come to speak about the individual performances. But the way in which this was framed had the potential to be meaningful and affecting and, I think, substantial to, certainly, the deaf community. But ultimately sort of felt like an afterthought and never really crystallized into a strong enough sense of meaning because there wasn't enough consistency between the two of them in the way in which they were staged. It's not like sideshow, and they were constantly bound together. There were moments when Ben as Quasimodo would come on stage and Oliver wouldn't appear for a few lines of dialogue and would come in a little late or would be absent entirely. There were moments when Christian Alado, as Esmeralda, would regard Oliver and would interact with him as Ben would watch on. Sometimes it would happen the other way around. But it was very, very fleeting and rare that Oliver would be regarded as the embodiment of Quasimodo on stage. For the most part, he seemed to act a little bit more like Peter Pan's shadow. And the way in which they were costumed also conveyed a little bit of confusion. Ben had very scruffy hair and a red cape that looked sort of bedraggled, while Oliver was dressed comparatively, but in a much smarter way. He just had a nice red shirt of the same shade. So at no point was there really any clarity as to what Oliver actually represented here and the idea that he meant to be conveying. We didn't get a sense of Quasimodo's inner self versus his outer self. Occasionally, Oliver would seem to encourage or prompt or reassure the other Quasimodo. But this definitely feels like something that, you know, in a longer rehearsal process, in a fuller production could be more fully realized. And I do think that ongoingly, the best way, if this is going to be the decision, the best way to represent Quasimodo would be to have Oliver be the principal performer and have Ben to the side not being directly regarded. Just to invert it, I think would instantly have made more sense. If Ben were singing the music and performing the dialogue, then I think that would have been a lot more meaningful. We would have understood, I think, then, what that was meant to be saying. And that, I think, perhaps, is the biggest criticism of mine when it comes to this concert production and the way that it was all brought together. I had far bigger issues with the material which I'm about to tell you about. But I seem to be largely alert, alone in that regard because the response to the show to a lot of the biggest numbers and to the final curtain call was huge. It was overwhelming. It was a massive amount of applause. This went down really, really well at the Prince Edward Theatre. It was hugely popular. The crowd leapt to their feet afterwards for a prolonged standing ovation. But since we're on that subject, I do feel that we need to have a conversation about these 5 minute plus standing ovations that are becoming more and more popular in theatre. Not only at this concert, but also recently with Evita in West End. And I'm not here to police the extent to which an audience is allowed to enjoy and celebrate something, but to my mind, it isn't really real if the performers are, for much of the thing, standing on stage in a straight row and just staring out into the audience and bowing perhaps once every 20 seconds. It starts to feel, I think, just a little bit performative, perhaps a little bit excessive. And it's not realistically something that wouldn't be happening at other West End shows if they didn't play them off, if they weren't set to music. But if you have bows in silence and the cast are just standing there and they don't leave the stage and they don't gesture to. You know, they gestured once to the BSL interpreter whose work I will mention in just a moment. But I find it a little bit obnoxious. I do. And it doesn't mean that this is the best show because the curtain call has gone on for longer than you've ever experienced before. It doesn't mean this is the best show you've seen in your life. This would be happening nightly at Les Mis, at Hamilton if they didn't have the good sense to play them off musically and then to play exit music. It's not about staying on stage until the last person has stopped clapping. And you know what? There are bigger problems in theatre and there are more productive things that I could be getting annoyed about. But the last thing we need is for the Cannes Film Festival standing ovation culture to start to make its way into the West End to be getting reports of, like Evita now has the longest curtain call applause in the West End with six continuous minutes. We don't need that. It's performative and it's not real. One thing I want to say is I was really grateful for the BSL interpreter who was interpreting the performance that I saw. I believe this was only a feature of one out of three performances, which I do think is a shame. And I think it would have really improved people's connection to the choreography that Oliver was doing, as well as other moments of choreography in the show. Because I have no fluency in BSL whatsoever, and so I wouldn't have realized that a lot of the gestures and a lot of the movements in the choreography were derived from bsl. The choreography that they were doing with Topsy Turvy replicated the BSL interpretation of that lyric, which I thought was so charming. Some of the most joyous moments for me in this concert production were seeing the parity between those movements and the actual BSL interpretation. It also provided, I think, much more of an insight into what it was that Oliver was doing and the connection to the bsl, but the fact that it was also different. It was more of an emotive, interpretive movement response. Anyway, having largely sung the praises of this particular production of the show, let's move on and talk about why I do not like the Hunchback of Notre Dame on Stage Day.
- [16:55]
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- [17:27]
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- [17:49]
Mickey Jo
Reach Out.
- [17:50]
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- [17:54]
Mickey Jo
There age so here's the thing. I'm a Disney boy. I like a Disney movie. I like a Disney holiday. I like a Disney theatrical stage show. But I have seen multiple recently where, for no good reason, there are dramatic changes to the source material from the film that don't play any better on stage, or there are just disappointing reworkings of the book and of the script. And I'm not suggesting that the screenplays, as they existed in the original films, are Shakespearean levels of dialogue, but they have that Disney tone and quality. And guess what? People are going to the Hunchback of Notre Dame because they like it. You don't need to rework it it to this extent. Essentially what has happened in the journey of the Hunchback of Notre Dame from the film to the stage, at least since it was reworked for the US premiere. I think the original German version may be closer to the original film with some implemented changes, is that the whole thing has tonally become a little more dark, a little more gritty, a little more realistic. And I am on board with some of these changes. There will be spoilers in this section. Skip ahead if you don't want to know about what happens differently in the stage production. Because I do not mind that Esmeralda dies. There it is. There is the big spoiler and a big twist about the ending. I do not mind about that. I do not mind that instead of walking out into the daylight outside of Notre Dame with, you know, these inexplicably clean streets after a lake of lava has surrounded the cathedral and inexplicably not burnt it to the ground, because, you know, we now know in 2025 that it is in fact quite flammable. I don't mind that we don't have that moment of the little girl touching Quasimodo on the face and representing the fact that society, you know, is now not ableist anymore and everything's going to be lovely. I don't mind us no longer having that very Disney ending and doing something a little bit more devastating where instead we hear about Quasimodo's skeleton being found cradling the skeleton of Esmeralda in the catacombs of the cathedral. My issue comes with, A, almost everything else that has happened before that, and B, the fact that it undercuts our ability to communicate what the message of the story now is. There's even a line in there saying, we wish we had a nice moral for you, but we don't. And then they sing. Here is the riddle to guess if you can sing the bells of Notre Dame, what makes a monster and what makes a man. And so it's the same sort of musing on morality, but it feels very disempowered. And instead I think if we are going to go the darker and more realistic route, then that final enduring message to be communicated ought to be something a little closer to the one in Les Miserables where all of the students are dead again. Once again, spoiler alert. All of the students are dead. And we hear their Ghosts slowly walking forwards and singing about how a better day will come. And Hunchback has a song that carries that same idea. It's called Someday. And I think that needs to be more strikingly the final message of the show. It's in there. It just doesn't really emerge in the final moments as it ought to. And in fact, for a darker version of Hunchback, I think Les Mischievous is a pretty good benchmark of how they ought to try and achieve that. And there seems to have been a real reluctance to stage the Hunchback of Notre Dame since its North American premiere, at least in a professional capacity. And I, for a long time, have said that Les Mis ought to be the route that they should follow in the uk. Do a production at the Barbican Centre, which is a vast stage, do it in conjunction with the Royal Shakespeare Company and try and emulate that same kind of success. Because the story is ultimately a little dark and quite sorrowful and full of oppression, like a lay Les Mis. Not for nothing, they both have singing priests. They are both set in Paris, though absolutely no one makes any attempt to sound French. And they are both celebrated by audiences for, above all else, their remarkable scores. It's the songs that keep people going to Les Mis and I think would get people going to the Hunchback of Notre Dame. But at the same time, I don't subscribe to the idea that you have to sacrifice all of the charm of the film and the heart of the film. What we have here is darker, but it also feels a little bit. Bit soulless. And a big problem with the staging of Quasimodo with two performers is that we inherently don't perceive his isolation because he has a best friend that is running around with him as he's ringing all of these bells. And he has this cheery facade. We aren't really able to effectively grasp, I don't think, the real genuine sorrow and loneliness of his circumstances. And like in many recent Disney shows, they have cut back on the witty sidekicks. The gargoyles now offer these sort of. Of profound pieces of advice. Not always good advice, may I point out, because Esmeralda brings a mortally wounded Phoebus to the top of Notre Dame. How she got him up the stairs, I have no idea. But she lays him down. Causes like, go put him on that pew over there. Frollo will never look at that pew. And then she explains explicitly that she will be right back. She will be back as soon as she can. And then the gargoyles, apropos of Nothing very out of pocket. Not that they have pockets. They're made of stone. Say to Quasimo, what are you doing? Why don't you follow her? Phoebus comes to Quasi's, like, I figured out what her necklace means. I'm gonna go follow her. She gave you that for emergencies. It's like parents leaving their kids at home with a little bit of money just in case they need it. And them immediately spending it on, I don't know, TikTok Shop or whatever. And so Quasimodo leaves, Phoebus goes after him, and things go very badly wrong. And ultimately, if you think about it, all of the death and the sorrow that follows is really the gargoyles fault, I'll be honest. And the personalities of these statue characters get so close to charming throughout the show, but they never quite get there. They remain not the characters that we know from the animated film. They have very much cut the song a guy like you. I think it could still work. That is a bold claim, but I think, you know, Les Mis still has master of the house. I think you could open the second act with a guy like you. You could tone it down somewhat. We don't need gargoyles in drag necessarily. We don't need one of them to have a romantic fixation on the goat. It's not an Edward Albee play, but I think that' actually a Pretty Perfect Act 2 opener is them trying to reassure Quasimodo that, you know, she could fall in love with him and everything he is dreaming of could come true. And only afterwards do we find out how dire the real situation is. And he then immediately sees how she feels about Phoebus. And that bursts his whole bubble. Now, speaking of the goat again, a very recent Disney theatrical move, other than with Frozen, we have no fun animal sidekicks in the show either. There is no Jali the goat. There is no Achilles the horse. So you don't get the great joke of Achilles sit and Achilles stay building towards Achilles heel. And horses are one thing, but you cannot tell me that you couldn't puppeteer a goat on stage. I have seen puppet goats in multiple other shows. You could borrow a puppet goat. That's all I'm saying. And not to launch into a full Disney theatrical rant right now, but if you look back to their earlier stage projects, Beauty and the Beast, where you have talking candelabra, dancing cutlery and the Lion King, for crying out loud, when you have every animal on the savannah represented, what do you mean you can walk an elephant through the auditorium onto the stage, but you can't have a goat. I'm just saying the imagination has died. Now, if we go right back to the beginning of the material, Quasimodo's backstory is largely reworked, because before we even find out about him, we find out about his parentage, and we find out about a young Claude Frollo living in Paris with his brother Jeanne, who is reckless and who is pursuing the passions and the enjoyments of life. And I don't really care much for this backstory one, because I. I don't think we need to humanize the character of Judge Claude Frollo. I think it's important that his bigotry as a religious zealot stand by itself. I think that is enough of a character explanation without trying to give him a sort of wicked Elphaba backstory justification about, you know, feeling sad about what happened to his brother. It's also worth pointing out that J does not come off particularly well in these few moments of exposition until we get to the point where he's dying and he's like, Frollo, please take care of this baby. Like J an up to that point has disregarded the support that his brother has tried to give him. And yes, his brother's very puritanical and admittedly dull as a teenager, but that's not the point compared with the film. Frollo has done far less wrong here. And I think it would be better that we meet him under the darker circumstances of being responsible for the death of one of the Remini travelers who he is trying to persecute, and then having to take care of the infant because the archdeacon guilt trips him into doing so and he's about to kill the baby instead. Like, that's a really dark place to start if we're going for darker. Hunchback of Notre Dame. And I think it's better. Better. I think it's better that we know and Quasimodo doesn't know throughout their relationship as it continues, that Frollo tried to kill him as a baby and that there is this enduring contempt lingering beneath the surface. Instead, we have a version where he is filled with conflict and he is Quasimodo's uncle. We don't quite know where he stands. And his initial conversations with Esmeralda are much softer, and they have several exchanges of dialogue. Frollo and Esmeralda, this is that they just go nowhere. And it's just this pointless philosophical back and forth that I don't enjoy. All in the name of fleshing out the first act, which Also includes the addition of a couple of songs. I don't mind the rhythm of the tambourine. I don't like the way that it breaks up Topsy Turvy. But what I really take issue with is, is it A Million Miles Away or Top of the World? It's Top of the World. I get them confused because they're the same song. A Million Miles Away is the song that Aladdin and Jasmine sing together. Together when they meet in the first act of Aladdin. But it's too soon to do A Whole New World, so they have to sing something else instead. It's the Disney theatrical act. One duet filler song. And the mood of the thing is always either, ha, look at the world and how beautiful it is. A Million miles away and Top of the World in Hunchback of Notre Dame. Or, like, I'm not gonna fall in love with you. We have different opinions looking at you. What do you know about love from Frozen? And also, I'm pretty sure there's one like that in her Hercules. It's just a pointless song. And I'm very grateful for the fact that Out There is still in the show, which is beautiful. And Heaven's Light and Heaven's Light going into hellfire, which is a really great transition. There's a lot of brilliant Hunchback of Notre Dame music that has been retained in the stage adaptation. And it's probably because I love the film so much that I am indifferent to a lot of the changes that were made. There's one sequence that really bothers me, and it's when Quasimodo decides to go and experience the Feast of Fools and their singing Topsy Turvy. My small issue with this is when he is crowned the king and Clopin recommences the song with everybody. And then they do, like, a quiet Fosse version where they're like, once a year we throw a party here in a town. And I'm like, you're in the open air. It's Paris. It's presumably loud. Nobody's hearing this party that you're throwing. We need once a year kick. We throw up. I mean, this is Paris. This is the home of the Moulin Rouge. We need a little bit of audacity here. Give me that. Everybody give me, like, a big recommencement. That's what we need. But my bigger issue is that the way that this scene unfolds has been fatally reworked in a really damaging way, I think, because now Esmeralda pulls Quasimodo on stage or goes to pull him on stage, but first realizes that he's not actually pulling a grotesque face or wearing a mask, that he instead just has a visible difference. She realizes this beforehand, notices her mistake, and then encourages him on anyway and says, you might as well get something out of it. Of it, which is super gross. And she goes to apologize afterwards because she feels bad. But I think it really wounds the character of Esmeralda to have chosen to do that, knowing what might happen to him and knowing who he was and understanding his situation. She is ignorant of that in the film. She does not realize until she goes to take his mask off on stage and realizes that it's his face. And then when that does happen and he is crowned the king, but then subsequently harassed. Harassed by this crowd that turns into a semi violent mob. Esmerelda, per the film, is the one who interrupts this and slowly walks over to him to give him help. And I have no idea why we don't use the same music from the film in this moment. Because it's beautiful. It sort of alludes to Someday. It's the melody of Someday, but it's light and it's instrumental and it's ethereal. And Someday is a song whose lyrics are about dreaming of a more tolerant, tolerant future. And that's what Esmeralda goes on to make a speech about in the animated film, in the stage production, in this one at least, she walks towards him in silence and then speaks on his behalf. But it's Frollo who additionally comes to Quasimodo's aid, contrary to the film, where he insists to Captain Phoebus that there is a lesson to be learned here and they ought to let Quasimodo continue suffering again, much darker. With that moment in the animated film also being the origin of Frollo's resentment of Esmeralda having found her really hot while she was doing her dancing. But five minutes ago. Go. Instead, the stage version leaves us in a really.
- [30:52]
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- [31:19]
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- [31:49]
Mickey Jo
Confusing place let us finish then with some thoughts about the performances. I thought Ben Joyce was terrific as Quasimodo in spite of the controversy around the casting. I thought he sounded fantastic, almost a shade too effortless. I don't know that I necessarily wanted the keys to be transposed, but there was something about his performance of Out There that was almost too easy. It was almost too comfortable within his vocal range. But there is something dramaturgically in the quality of aspiration that is best communicated by reaching for a high note and grasping at it. It's that thing that's up there, and if it's just there in front of you and he's really comfortably singing all of these notes, then it feels almost like something Quasimodo thinks and says and sings every day of his his life, rather than something that he is daring to suggest, rather than something that he is grasping at. The quality of reaching out for this dream that is almost impossible to achieve. And it conveys a passion as well, which Ben did with brilliant acting through song and he sounded sensational. And again, if this is going to be a showcase of the score and the material, then it makes absolute sense to have someone who can sing it really capably. I also thought he characterized Quasimodo very well. I thought it was a very endearing performance performance, and I think Oliver Hewing's dance performance alongside him added to the emotion of it considerably. I really liked the bell ringing choreography that he did at the end of the Bells of Notre Dame and again at the conclusion of the show. Loved that Christy Nalardo was a fabulous Esmeralda. Really, really great. And I have heard Christine sounding triumphant on many a previous occasion. I thought she stole the show when she was in We Will Rock youk at the London Coliseum a couple of summers ago go. But in all of the roles I've seen her play, I don't know that she's ever really had the opportunity to be stretched as an actress. And I really enjoyed her acting performance in this. And a big part of that is because I think she really tonally got Disney and she has the material that most closely resembles, I guess, the material that Esmeralda has in the film. And so she had the ability to still kind of bring that slightly sarcastic quite quality. It's very proximal to Meg from Hercules. But she also found humour in it and she found light hearted notes within a very bleak story and a very sorrowful circumstance. So I thought she did a really great job. And this is something I've never thought required any skill before. But the way that she got carried off stage as a lifeless corpse, it was just perfect. With one arm down and the head thrown backwards, it just looked perfect. And I brushed over it very quickly. And it's worth circling back to how fantastic she sounded singing the material. Material. She is a brilliant vocalist. She sounded amazing. I think the best thing that Hunchback ever did when it was adapted for the stage was to have Esmeralda properly belting. I ask for nothing in God help the Outcasts because she doesn't end the film. Then you had Dex Lee as Phoebus with a characterization that felt quite distinct from the original film. It took me a few moments to really recognize what it was that he was doing with this character. Ultimately I enjoyed it. He has a couple of strange moments of dialogue as well. I do think it's somewhat sullies the relationship between him and Esmeralda when he pays her a visit in what I took to be a brothel. And I prefer the notion of her being standoffish towards him because he is a soldier until he sacrifices himself to try and rescue other Romani travelers. Because it's at that point and only then that she can really understand that he has a good heart, that he's a good man. Underneath all of the bravado, what made me chuckle just a little bit is when Esmeralda and her community community are all considering fleeing Paris and moving on to the next place. And he suggests that he could go with them. And it's worth pointing out that by now he has been stabbed in the stomach some time ago. He has not received medical attention in the intervening scenes. And in spite of this, Clopin and Esmeralda say to Phoebus, are you mad? Come with us. You couldn't possibly. That would be terrible for you. And it's like, oh yeah, he should definitely stay in the city where a warrant has been issued by the king for his imprisonment and death as he slowly bleeds to death underground. Speaking of Clopin, not that he is the most fleshed out character in the original Disney film, but I do think that he has done a disservice by the adaptation to the stage. And there often seems to be in a lot of Disney projects, one character whose job it is to dramatically speaking direct traffic. By that I mean they exist within the dialogue to take the more important characters from one emotional place and point them off in a new direction direction or confirm back to them something they are already thinking. I'm reminded of a character that Heidi Blickenstaff played within the ensemble of the Little Mermaid in its original Broadway run. And she had two lines of dialogue which was something like we must never give up on our dreams. And then later in the show, sometimes we have to accept that our dreams are never going to come true. I'm not exactly quoting those correctly, but that was the general idea. It was completely contradictory for this character. But to the writers of the show, that character didn't matter. She only existed assisted to make conversation with Ariel. And Clopin has similar inconsistencies, not just because of that moment with thebus, but also earlier on when one of his first lines is to encourage all of the other members of his community to go out and steal. And then shortly afterwards, he meets Esmeralda, who is new, I guess, and tells her that she has to follow the rules and ought not to be a rule breaker. And it just, it comes across as a very weirdly wet blanket moment from Clover Pan, which, if I'm being honest, is the energy with which he was portrayed throughout this concert version. And sounded fantastic, as sung by Adam Strong, I thought sounded really brilliant. Doesn't get as many opportunities as in the film to show off those soaring high tenor moments at the Bells. We didn't get the chance to do that, but the physicality of Clopin and the characterization kind of fell flat for me. Where was the showmanship? Where was the charisma? Instead, Clopan sadly felt a little bit like a disgruntled airport employee at a check in desk who didn't want to be doing their job anymore. I will mention from the ensemble, James Gower Smith, who had multiple different character features and a handful of different moments, all played very, very well. He did a fantastic job. And finally, perhaps the MVP of the performance, Zachary James as the villainous judge Claude Frollo Zachary, seen previously on Broadway and in the West End when Hadestown returned to London and he, he played Hades at the Lyric Theatre. Zachary has had considerable success in the worlds of musical theater and opera, which made him the perfect vocalist for this role. That deep resonance that he found while singing Hellfire was just gorgeous. That number got a huge response and it was largely due to his fantastic performance and in spite of my personal feelings about the material affording new humanity and depth to Frollo, Zachary did a great job job of portraying him as a more multi layered and realized character. There was no pantomime villain quality to it whatsoever. He was complex and he was yearning and he was frustrated and tormented and malicious and vindictive and it was great. Which brings me to the end of my many, many thoughts about the Hunchback of Notre Dame as a musical and in this particular concert production. For years now I have made the deliberate choice of avoiding the material once I had begun to find out how different it was it was from the original film because I just knew that I wasn't going to gel with it. And perhaps the next time that I see it I won't be experiencing the whiplash of realization and I'll be able to appreciate it more on its own terms. But I think a big part of me will still be harbouring those frustrations for the version of the Huntback of Notre Dame that more closely follows the plot of the film that I think could very easily exist. And all of that taken into account, I still think that they did a great job of presenting the show in concert and I'm glad that so many London audiences audiences had the chance to enjoy it. And if you were one of those people, please let myself and everyone else know what you thought of Hunchback of Notre Dame in concert in the comments section down below. Thank you for listening to this review. I hope that you enjoyed. If you did, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Turn on notifications so YouTube lets you know every time I post a new review or go follow me on podcast platforms. As always, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh thanks for watching. Have a Stagey Day. Subscribe.
- [40:15]
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