Oof, that Frollo backstory really seems to drag "Bells Of Notre Dame" down. I don't mind him having a backstory, or even that particular backstory/song setup, but to put it right at the beginning surely stops the show before it even begins? Also wouldn't it be better to reveal his backstory gradually or later as to make why he hates the gypsies kind of a mystery at first?
I like this "Made of Stone" just fine, but it really doesn't have the same oomph as an 11:00 number as the Berlin "Someday"/"Einmal" did, with that epic choral climax. Probably too late for them to flip the song order back to that in Berlin before opening on the 9th (though I can hope), but hoping they revert back in the revisions before the next production(s).
"I actually like that Frollo isn't at first the main villain, after all he's an archdeacon in the church, it makes sense that he's trying to do the best that he can. The fact that he struggles with temptation and that moves him to do the wrong things is fantastic in my opinion."
Yeah I guess. But if they are going for that, they should just bring the Les Mis guys in for a few weeks to help with the book. This is essentially Disney's Les Mis, no?
Tom Hulce wasn't a spring chicken when he voiced Quasi in 1996 and he was perfect. Michael Arden looks and sounds the same as he did ten years when I saw him Bare, he just doesn't age. Also those clips are only 20% of the whole show and only 10% of his performance. And trust me, there is a clear distinction between his voice and Patrick Page's, especially in person.
My only problem is I like Frollo to be delusional, narcissistic and ruthlessly driven , I don't like Frollo to be so self aware and doubtful, because when it comes to the point where Quasi kills him, its not defense nor justice but revenge out of passion(because Frollo in this truly cares for Quasi and would never kill him being he's Jehan's son and his vow to him) so it ruins Quasi's innocence and makes him a monster, where as in the film Quasi even in defense takes the higher ground and finds strength NOT to kill him despite everything, making Quasi the better man-THAT'S my issue, it complicates the whole theme of "who is the monster and who is the man/what makes a monster and what makes a man" l
People think that going the pure evil route is being one dimensional but they often fail to see that evil like movie Frollo did really exist then and still does exist now and it's not being one-dimensional but truthful when displaying that kind of person, displaying a real monster, the cruelest monsters in history were indeed one-dimensional with no redeeming value, ruthlessly narcasstic without a valid reason or clear explanation other than their classic mantra "Because I can."
"HELLFIRE - perfect. Too bad its in the first act. "
I actually think it works great near the end of act one. It's the song that sets up what's going to happen in the second act. Kind of like Epiphany (Sweeney Todd), Tomorrow Belongs to Me (Cabaret), Everything's Coming Up Roses (Gypsy), etc.
Hmmm this frolo does seem to be very problematic. Are we suppose to have sympathy for him in this? When I first heard the songs on tumblr it seemed like the creators were trying to make him more of the Javert character...more anti hero-ish. But he tries to rape Esmeralda? Oy I bet Patrick page has a headache every night haha.
I have not read the book. And yes I am dying to hear SOMEDAY but it apparently is only a duet so I just keep watching the German version of it ( which is just glorious).
I don’t think I have any spoilers but we warned! I saw Hunchback Saturday night with a group. Everyone really enjoyed it as did I but I have some concerns-mostly casting and clarity of story. The highlights: • The choir was phenomenal! The power of that body was moving. • The set-magical; the bells were wonderful and in a larger venue having Quasi do some larger swings of the ropes would add to the effect. •Michael Arden -transformation into Quasi was a wonderful moment -How his voice and stance changed when he was alone and not as the rest of the world sees him. -An innocent spirit and presence -ASL-I loved the subtle inclusion of sign language. This may be from his Deaf West experience but it would be wonderful if a bit more was included with deliberate placement for emphasis. A quasi in today’s world would absolutely use sign language to communicate and it added this extra layer of his desire to connect and communicate with others even though his speech made it difficult.
The backstory of Frollo did add to the story but it was not a great way to begin. Maybe there is room for a song between brothers? Instead we were left with the death of the brother in the first few minutes without an emotional connection and suddenly Quasi entered. Sometimes we don’t need a complicated backstory to the villain. We just need to know he is the bad guy but even with the backstory we didn’t get there. If his central struggle is his sexual desire that either needs to be played up or move on because it wasn’t enough but probably isn’t something that will be play well with audiences if it is more obvious. Any thoughts on this?
I've been waiting for this one for years. :) No one has yet commented on what the initial blog post says happens at the end - the townspeople hunch over in support of Quasi. That seems silly to me.
Also, I'd selfishly like to know if one of my favorite bits of Disney lyrical acrobatics remains. It's at the end of Topsy Turvy - "It's the day we do the things that we deplore/ On the other 364." I love it.
"I've been waiting for this one for years. :) No one has yet commented on what the initial blog post says happens at the end - the townspeople hunch over in support of Quasi. That seems silly to me."
I think this is one of the moments you need to see in the entire arch of the whole piece . . .
The "hunching over" done at the end of the show is indeed a thing that needs to be seen in context. I found it really quite beautiful. And to say they all "hunch over" is actually an oversimplification of what happens. At the end of the opening number, Michael Arden strides out as a normal man (though in costume already), and as he sings the words "what makes a monster and what makes a man?" he pulls his hand across his face, leaving streaks of brown paint. He then adjusts his physicality as a fabric hump is tied to his back by ensemble members and covered with a tunic, thus becoming the hunchback in front of us. At the end of the show, as he comes out into the street and the crowd recoils from him, a young girl steps forward, considers Quasi for a moment, and then draws her own hand across her face, leaving the same brown streaks of paint on her as he has on him. The whole ensemble slowly follows suit, and they also contort their own bodies in some way (not necessarily by "hunching"), thus silently driving home the point that we are all, in our own ways, both monsters and men. It's very theatrical, and I felt it fit the production.
I haven't seen this production (yet), but from everyone's descriptions of the plot changes and the changes made to the character of Frollo, they seem to have brought him much closer in spirit to that of Victor Hugo's character in the original novel. That, IMO, is a very good thing.
The Frollo of the novel is one of the most brilliant, conflicted, complicated characters in all of literature, and he brings out extremely ambivalent feelings in the reader. He is not "evil", but is extremely intelligent, neurotic, and even compassionate in the beginning, and has essentially an extended psychological breakdown over the course of the novel, and becomes consumed by lust and cruelty. What happens to this man is a tragedy, every bit as much as the fallout of his actions with regards to Quasimodo and Esmeralda, and the machinations of the Medieval (in)justic system. None of the film versions have done this character justice, so I welcome an attempt to make him a much more nuanced character.
The levels of religious and theological allegory in Hugo are well-known. "Les Miserables" is often posited as a battle not between good and evil, but between Javert's Old Testament conception of good, relying on a legalistic code of sin and punishment, and Valjean's New Testament conception of good, relying on self-sacrifice and the love of others over following the rules.
Claude Frollo represents a now mostly forgotten theory of behavior and spirituality, which can be thought of as "Christian sociopathy." The idea, which is rejected by most denominations now but crops up in some of the hard-line fundamental Protestant groups, is that without a genuine love of God and his Grace (not lip service), not only CAN any man become a monster, but given the opportunity, any man WILL. You can see a mostly secularized version of this concept in the tale of Walter White on Breaking Bad, an originally good man whose one step to the bad side leads him to more and more steps in the same direction, until he loses sight of who he originally was. In many ways, he and Hugo's Frollo are the same.
Disney's original Frollo was a less conflicted character, though he remained the same at the core: a man on "the side of right" who nonetheless carries immense hatred and lust in his heart, deny it as he may. In making the character less controversial, Frollo went from a priest to a judge. In some ways, this may have weakened the character, but in a metaphorical sense, it was a strong choice. Frollo takes his position of judge to an absolute, believing himself to be a nearly Godlike arbiter. He judges the law, he judges the behavior of his fellow men to be sin, he even begins to judge who does and does not deserve to live, declaring gypsies and the deformed to be unworthy of life. Throughout the film, the notion of "judgment" became the central theme, with "what makes a monster and what makes a man," and finally "who is the monster and who is the man" becoming the questions that begin and end the film, for the audience itself to judge.
Clopin's emergence as an anti-judge, presiding over a gleefully corrupt kangaroo court, may make little dramatic impact in the current version, because not only has Clopin's role been reduced, with Frollo a preacher and not a legal figure, Clopin will no longer stand out as his foil.
Sapsarrow, I totally agree with you. His physicality was very powerful. He used the hunching down brilliantly throughout the production. When he was alone we would straighten more since it was the world that was seeing him like that.
