The Hunchback of Notre Dame at Paper Mill — Page 11

"Well, looks like we all wasted our time talkin' about future productions. Lovely."

Someone has said that they're aiming for a last-second Chicago run and then Broadway. So, anything could happen.

*siiiiiiigh* Is there *anyone* on this ****ing thread who actually has a straight answer about what the **** is happening with this ****ing show?!?!?

You know what....I don't care anymore. All this hemming and hawing over what version they should've done, all this talk of what's gonna happen next for the show (or from the looks of it, what's not gonna happen). After all of this, I just don't give two ****s.

Next stop is Paris with all new cast with continuing to work on show. Broadway one day, someday, maybe. Write to Tom Schumacher. Let him know.

So I'm not allowed to be frustrated? Real classy, Lizzy.

Well, according to Erik Liberman's Twitter, this may very well be the end of the line for this show.

*sigh* Goddammit.

"I have heard the reason the show is not moving is because of the choir. Disney has hoped all along to get a "deal" on the choir and do something like JOSEPH did."

Not to be blunt... but....BS. I don't believe that for a second.

Updated On: 4/5/15 at 03:09 PM

Jeremy Lapp, one of the assistant directors, just posted on Twitter that there will be more Hunchback. So, who really knows what is going on.

I saw it this afternoon. I personally believe it's not making the move because there's no real target demographic to whom the show can be marketed in an open-ended commercial run. It's certainly not a show families can attend (I watched two scurry up the aisle well before intermission, stuffed bunnies held tightly to small chests), and not serious enough as an advance of the art form or successful as an adult entertainment for an older audience. In its current form, it's heavy as the lead that flows at its end, ponderous and -- and, with my own preferences for darker material, I seldom say this -- a certifiable downer. After "Out There," 20 minutes in (note how late by the way) the show doesn't offer much in the way of positive emotion for the rest of the two and a half long hours. The second act's trajectory is downhill, and then beyond merely tragic, it follows Hugo so loyally it underscores the proceedings with a kind of non-message of total despair. A woman two seats down from me cried out "ugh!" after the standing O for the hard-working cast had ebbed. I said "yeah.

Much has been said here about the flat, literal, passion-play presentational direction. I can only offer complete agreement. Schwartz fils stages everything as if it's Schwartz pere's "Magic to Do" in a college production, minus the magic. When in doubt, put everyone in a five foot square down center and let them baldly declaim the narrative and pitch ballads toward row Q. If a scene has no dramatic period (Parnell's doing), pull down the big bells again and send the mightily toiling Michael Arden out on the apron to glare at us anew with his Elephant Man gaze. So much talent in service of so little real inspiration, starting with Patrick Page, who must carry much of the 80 minute first act on his back (and voice). By the time he is bathed in red lights (as subtle as everything else, that) and intoning again about hell, his inflamed loins, and that gypsy whore, let me just say: we long for Terry Hands's direction of "Carrie."

At least three concepts fight one another for a central directorial conceit. We get Pippin-esque players, we get ecclesiastical pageantry blended with "Sweeney"-serious cautionary tale stylings, and something close to a "La Mancha" styled story-within-a-story (minus Cervantes, er Hugo), all of it tried on for size in the first 15 minutes, none of it persuasive or consistent. At intermission, a young teen nearby said: "But why do they keep taking those big robes on and off?" "Damned if I know, Honey" was the answer from the bored mother. I'll be damned if I know, either. On and off come flowing religious regalia, revealing harlequins, and scamps, then new and different robes are donned, also shed at key moments.

A couple of bell tower scenes aside, almost nothing is really dramatized. Yet it's all crammed into that square piece of tiled decking, where no actor dares look at another, only out (there) toward the middle of the center orchestra. And then, everyone is surrounded by the much-discussed upstage, recessed choir, all carrying their music, and forced to stare from above at the murky goings on, always in half-shadow. If they are the raison d'etre for this staging, they are mysteriously uninteresting to have around. And I'm sorry -- blasphemy here -- listen to.

Which is all about the score. I'm a big fan of Menken, truly everything else he's written, and even enjoyed the way the numbers worked in the fairly compelling animated film (which, it must be noted, wasn't stuck with this series of Hugo-dictated horrors as its ending). But there the pop sensibilities were sustained, tonally dark, but of a piece, consistently employed. Here, everything has been amped up, orchestrated and arranged to allow the smallest moment to be underscored with chanting and feverish -- and to me, highly pretentious -- choral punctuation. It would be intrusive if it was not so omnipresent. It doesn't interrupt, it is the show. You so wait for a quiet moment, but few arrive. Silence isn't trusted here, ever. I don't understand all the love for the choral work on this board, because it's so one-note, and drowns the storytelling in a wash of sticky liturgical goo. But excess is the key to the concept behind the score's performance and presentation.

If the show succeeded in making a case for the dark story, we might be deeply moved. But the obligatory moments -- Quasimodo rescuing the about-to-burn Esmeralda the one event required to offer theatrical magic -- are rendered so perfunctorily, without a whiff of real imagination, they are buried. Flat. Non-events. We are so emotionally engaged by Arden's "Out There," to get back to the last moment the show felt alive, we want to feel the character's struggle, go on this downward trajectory and end up in a cathartic place that makes it worthwhile. But once the bodies begin dropping, it just feels like so much reported bad news. "Reported" the operative word, since everything here is packaged and framed via narrative. When we finally learn the ultimate fate -- taken from Hugo, but suggested as a kind of spiritual positive, a la "Aida" -- we wonder for the 50th time: "Why didn't we SEE that? Why only have it told to us?"

I don't know what would correct these deficiencies. If it's to remain the story told, it needs to be presented with a modicum of reality, directed to make the scary, sad turns in the story wrenching and immediate. Let the plot just happen in front of us, it's that simple, instead of being hammered home via rotating narration that's not even musicalized effectively. Late in the show it simply apes "Sweeney," the chorus lining up and shouting at us, with Quasimodo made to behave rather like Tobias (someone else muttered that on the way out). It only reminds us of how fully engaged we are by the time we get into that bakehouse. Here, we're high atop Notre Dame, and the stakes are indeed as high. Yet it all flies by us, the heaving bodies, the "Les Miz" Javert death homage, all of it, with no particular focus or sense of emotional impact. It's the clumsiest handling of tragic elements I've ever seen, flattened, dulled, and robotic in execution. Like mediocre opera staging.

I can appreciate the ambitiousness in the writing, but I can't forgive the truly pedestrian direction, which doesn't seem to understand the storytelling demands -- necessarily tying sequences together with emotional drive, instead of creating tableau semi-vivant that can be annotated by that (ear-piercing) Latin-spewing choir.

The tale itself in this form, this true to Hugo, isn't my taste. But if this has a viable commercial future, it needs to be handed over to a skilled director who simply wants to present this sad story with clarity. All of these obviously borrowed trappings only make the show look desperate to find audiences. The ones who happily paid for every theater piece I mentioned here. Walking to the car I heard "well, not Les Miz, is it?" That much is true.

Updated On: 4/5/15 at 07:24 PM

Michael Arden tweeted and then deleted the following on Friday:

"And then sometimes despite incredibly hard work and dedication, you get nothing in return. Makes you wonder if it's worth it."

Eta: Auggie, I agrr with you completely. The #1 problem with this production was Scott Schwartz's terrible, amateur direction. Not sure why no one on the team could see that. Next time, hire a real director.

Updated On: 4/6/15 at 08:02 PM

Wouldn't Stephen Schwartz want the show to succeed rather than let his son bring it down?

He should have a tweet adviser, because he does **** like that all the time, in case anyone's forgotten the one he posted about how hurt that he was that he never got to be the lead in a major revival of Pippin on Broadway (I think when it won the Tony, but don't quote me on that; I do know someone made a big deal out of it on here, and the response was not dissimilar to the one to this tweet).

I'm hearing some parts of audio from a recent performance (it's almost 12:30 and I was doing homework all night) and it's too bad because it sounded like they made some improvements (but some parts are more rushed now).