The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Thru July 6, 2008
Bailiwick Repertory
1229 W. Belmont, Chicago
773.883.1090
Theater Review by Lucia Mauro
It’s been five years since I’ve writtten a theater review. But after viewing Dennis DeYoung’s heartfelt musical, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, I felt compelled to comment. Not surprisingly, the sweeping, melodic score carries the show, currently under David Zak’s direction at Bailiwick Repertory. It’s an epic tearjerker that made me feel intimately connected to the multidimensional plights of each main character. And though performed in a small space, I could envision a sprawling Cameron Mackintosh production, where the Gothic cathedral (essentially the main character of Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel) and its gargoyles and flying buttresses would engulf the stage.
At a time when irony and disharmony dominate music theater, it’s refreshing to experience DeYoung’s rapturously operatic music. Some may call it bombastic or view it as a throwback to those famous 1980’s blockbuster musicals with revolving stages and falling chandeliers. But I found myself thoroughly engaged and pulled into DeYoung’s passionate and sophisticated rendering of Hugo’s love-lust quadrangle.
It’s rare to experience a musical where almost every song – from “Who Will Love This Child? to “With Every Heartbeat” – resonates. DeYoung will forever be associated with the arena-rock band Styx. So many might assume Hunchback is a rock opera. For me, it felt more like an opera with pop overtones, and each song believably advanced the story. The Bailiwick stage posed its own logistical challenges. Nevertheless, conductor-keyboardist Keith Dworkin made his small group of musicians sound grandly orchestral (in fact, the music was really too big for the space.)
George Andrew Wolff’s empathetic Quasimodo anchored the production. His crystal-clear tenor and non-self-pitying portrayal transformed the deformed bell ringer into the most humanistic of all the characters. He was well paired with Dana Tretta’s Esmeralda, a spitfire belter who also savored the script’s quieter moments. Unexpectedly, Michael Harnichar made an indelible impression as heartless soldier Gudule – a seemingly minor yet pivotal role that could have easily gone the villainous moustache-twirling route.
Though I would cut some of the comedic banter (particularly in relation to the gypsies’ Egyptian origins and “pharaoh-enough” quips), I would not change the psychologically complex treatment of the protagonists: Archdeacon Claude Frollo, Quasimodo and Esmeralda. DeYoung smartly opted out of creating a stage version of the 1939 Hunchback film starring Charles Laughton and Maureen O’Hara. He went back to Hugo’s book and, therefore, took a gamble on a more tragic ending. However, with the three main characters dead by the end of the show, a deeper commentary is possible: the reality that they only could be together in the afterlife. The skewed ethics, prejudices and moral codes of their earthly existence would have made any sort of consummation impossible.
DeYoung also chose to focus on Frollo, portrayed here a bit too stiffly by Jeremy Rill, as a once-compassionate priest struggling with natural human urges amid a culture of repression. Apart from the gallant – and shallow -- Captain Phoebus, the major players are not reduced to types. Within the cut-and-dried strictures of musical theater, they dare to struggle with the debilitating contradictions of life.
It’s unfortunate that DeYoung’s musical Hunchback – in the works for more than ten years – got sidetracked by the Disney version. His rendering is so much more moving and complex, at the same time accessible and emotionally truthful. I think Hunchback deserves a longer national and international life.
