Alan Menken Interview - HUNCHBACK CONFIRMED!- Page 2

[Tag]

Posted: 7/15/13 at 9:51pm

If Jeremy Jordan plays Quasi, at least they'll save money by not having to mask his face.

[disneybroadwayfan22]

Posted: 7/15/13 at 10:06pm

I think Bertie Carvel would be a good Quasi. He has the body and possibly the perfect, belting voice. He sounds incredible in the PARADE soundtrack.

[N2N Nate.]

Posted: 7/15/13 at 10:09pm

I always pictured Quasi in his early to mid 20's...

[Tsao5]

Posted: 7/15/13 at 10:40pm

If it does finally happen, I can't imagine it happening before 2015. And yes, it will be in design and feel quite different from the Berlin production, which was very dark and had an almost constantly angry feeling.

The Berlin design was unique (and very expensive) at the time with the silent rising cubes and projections. But that was almost 14 years ago, and projections have come a LONG LONG way since then.

Not having James Lapine as the writer/Director will certainly lighten the whole show and will probably allow the Gargoyles to have a bit more of the wit and humor than they had in the Berlin production (which was none)

Some of the book problems will hopefully be worked out too such as why the townspeople would be rising up against Frollo (gypsies we can understand since Frollo was sending his men to catch them, but it was unclear why the townspeople would also be storming Notre Dame, since they hated the gypsies also).

Terrance Mann would be a GREAT Frollo. Tom Hewitt and Patrick Page also come to mind.

[whatever2]

Posted: 7/15/13 at 10:49pm

theaterkid: thanks.

i can understand that the German design would not make it on today's broadway, but i was fortunate enough to have seen the Berlin version, and fwi I thought it was extremely well done -- great production values that really served the non-formulaic plot. spinning teapots go with a happy ending, but the story presented there had more complexity, which to me was served well by the German design.

oh, well ... at 150 bucks a pop, i suppose the tourists deserve a happy ending and dancing candelabras.

[all that jazz]

Posted: 7/15/13 at 11:09pm

"So, is The Princess and the Frog next?"

PLEASE!

[darquegk]

Posted: 7/15/13 at 11:25pm

One thing I'm sure we can expect in this remake is that Quasimodo will become closer to the film version- a sensitive, intelligent artist with a beautiful soul hidden inside a twisted body. In the German version he was not only physically but mentally challenged. Only when he sang did we see any glimpse of how conscious he was inside. When he talked to others, he was clearly mentally stunted in some way.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 7/16/13 at 12:01am

^Was that in the text or did the actor just play it that way?

[Brave Sir Robin2]

Posted: 7/16/13 at 2:00am

I'm very excited for HUNCHBACK, but between JUNGLE BOOK and ALADDIN, are we getting Disney overload? Or is JUNGLE BOOK not headed for Broadway? Also, I don't know if she's too old now, but Idina Menzel would have made a really good Esmerelda. Nicole Scherzinger would be good if she could act.

I'm all for making the gargoyles humorous if this means Esmerelda dies.

[theatredk]

Posted: 7/16/13 at 2:48am

I did't know there was a filmed version of Parade!!

[darquegk]

Posted: 7/16/13 at 8:08am

It was in the text. Quasi could barely speak in full sentences, but when alone, his psyche communicated in song or through the language of the gargoyles. Rather than being his imaginary friends, they functioned as the voices of his own personality.

[rorschach37]

Posted: 7/16/13 at 9:17am

I love me some Jeremy Jordan, but isn't he too much of a pretty boy to play Quasi? I think I'd rather see someone like Genson Blimline in the part.

LOVE the idea of Terrance Mann as Frollo and Christian Borle as Clopin!!

[Patash]

Posted: 7/16/13 at 9:25am

Please God, please. Somewhere in there let them use the line "what hump?"

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 7/16/13 at 9:52am

i can understand that the German design would not make it on today's broadway, but i was fortunate enough to have seen the Berlin version, and fwi I thought it was extremely well done -- great production values that really served the non-formulaic plot. spinning teapots go with a happy ending, but the story presented there had more complexity, which to me was served well by the German design.

Really? I just found it monotonous. A slide show on blocks. Yes, the blocks went up and down, but it was still a slide show projected on blocks. The scene where Phoebus falls off the bridge into the river was just so silly.

[jagfkb]

Posted: 7/16/13 at 10:06am

My two cents:

They will NEVER succeed in trying to pass it off as a Disney Family Friendly Extravaganza along the lines of Lion King or Beauty; the show just isn't that. It deals with, by far, the deepest and darkest themes ever explored by a Disney cartoon. That isn't to say it cannot succeed, especially if it were modeled in hype like another show about a deformed savant who loses the girl to the handsome guy. Yes, I'm talking about Phantom.
If Disney was smart, they'd do an exact replica of Phantom's killer marketing campaign: rereleasing the songs as pop standards before the show's debut, (heck, even do what Aida did hand have a whole bunch of artists record your concept album), build a grand, luxurious design with some killer special effects (which have already been built into the story: the Feast of Fools, the bridge, the burning of Paris, the court of Miracles, and ESPECIALLY the finale sequence), and for optional added effect, cast a (talented) heartthrob as Quasi and a name as Esmerelda, two people the audience can't help but falling in love with, and in the months surrounding the opening, exploit them to no end (I might also write a new duet for them, hopefully to replace or aid "On Top of the World").
And THAT is how this show succeeds.

[michellek45]

Posted: 7/16/13 at 10:21am

I think the film is old enough and forgotten enough that most of its main fans are older, who saw it when they were little. I don't think this is one of the classics that parents are still showing their kids, like Little Mermaid or Lion King. That said, I think Disney would be wise to pull the same thing they did with Peter and the Starcatcher: put their name on it so as to attract those die-hard Disney fans, but not really market it as a Disney property so they can go in a different, less family-friendly direction with it. Hopefully if they keep it out of the New Amsterdam and are more covert with their name recognition, there will be a chance that they keep the darker aspects of the German production in and stick closer to the book.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 7/16/13 at 10:51am

Honestly, I don't think Hunchback is really any darker than Lion King which was given even more mature elements in its stage transfer with numbers like Endless Night, Shadowland and the mourning of Mufasa.

[finebydesign]

Posted: 7/16/13 at 12:21pm

"It's just strange they would entrust a large-scale production to someone who has no experience with them."

Well there is a memo floating around from a certain Star Catcher that scales the production down considerably. It's much more Johny Doyle than it is Beauty and the Beast in scope. He suggested the play be in a Brechtian style for purposes of storytelling. The set was a bare stage save for a few chairs, a trunk , ladders, rope, sandbags(bells). Costumes are minimal, jeans, t-shirts.

Interestingly rather than the actors/instruments on stage approach, actors physicality is showcased as in the Pippin revival. The ropes and ladders are used for Cirque Du Soleil-style acrobatics that focus on the skill of the actors rather than the spectacle of a giant notre dame cathedral. Quasimodo like Spiderman would have a double that does aerial work.

So there is spectacle but its more organic than the themepark route.

Also the sound of the show is a harder-edged aural presentation. He suggests the beauty of the score be stripped of musical embellishments. The movie score it ain't.

This information is a bit old but I'm sure its still in consideration.

[RippedMan]

Posted: 7/16/13 at 1:29pm

That sounds awful.

And it doesn't really matter what the person playing Quasi looks like. He'll have makeup on his face a la Shrek and a hump.

[actormcfamous]

Posted: 7/16/13 at 4:03pm

Sara Ramirez for Esmeralda.

[michellek45]

Posted: 7/16/13 at 6:14pm

MisterMatt, I think you're right about the fact that in terms of violence, Hunchback and Lion King are pretty close. But there is a lot of (barely) underlying sexual imagery/themes in Hunchback and, for whatever reason, people consider that much more offensive than violence, at least in the US.

[Starship]

Posted: 7/16/13 at 6:22pm

Sara Ramirez as Esmerleda. YES!

And yes..please "The Princess and the Frog" NEEDS to be next):

[all that jazz]

Posted: 7/16/13 at 6:31pm

I agree that this should be Phantomized.

[TheatreKid3]

Posted: 7/16/13 at 6:41pm

I agree. If they try to do this via a contemporary concept it will fail miserably and cost them their greatest musical source material in their canon. That is basically guaranteed. If what finebydesign says is true - I honestly don't know what they are thinking. An acrobatic concept is not appropriate for that story at all.

Of course I said the same thing about design concept about NEWSIES, but what they came up with was a nice mesh of contemporary and classical, so I was pleasantly surprised. Who knows?

This show MUST be a dark, grand, old-fashioned, breathtaking, large pit orchestra spectacle. So yes, it should be "phantomized." The material deserves that much.

Updated On: 7/16/13 at 06:41 PM

[adam.peterson44]

Posted: 7/16/13 at 6:47pm

Michelle45k, i think that you are correct in your assessment (at least it agrees with lots of observations that i have made over the years), and i find that horribly sad (sad that people find sex more offensive than violence, not sad that you are right).