Hunchback of Notre Dame

This was my first visit to Trinity Players although I had seen members of the company before. In 2022 members provided entertainment at the West Midlands Conference, AGM and Awards during which they sang a couple of numbers from West Side Story.

Prior to curtain up it was great to meet the show director Dan Barnes who had clearly worked hard on the production along with his musical director and choreographer.

Based on the 1831 novel by Victor Hugo and the 1996 Disney animated adaptation with a glorious score by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Stephen Schwartz, this musical is not for the faint hearted! It is also altogether a lot darker than Disney film and has an ending much closer to the original novel. Showcasing themes such as faith, power, discrimination, isolation, and sacrifice, The Hunchback of Notre Dame offers a powerful message of acceptance and includes representations of disability, women and Roma.

The production should not rely on huge elaborate sets but instead should focus on storytelling by the cast and the audience using their imagination. The set was well designed for this purpose with the main part of the stage as inside Notre Dame, while the stage right area was used most effectively as the bell tower and enabled the production to flow from scene to scene with ease. An elaborate looking stained-glass window was hung upstage behind the main set.

In front of the stage were the choir who handled the complexities of the music very well under the direction of musical director Peter Bushby with the task of the main storytelling falling to the Gargoyles, Statues, Gypsy Girls and Parishioners with some doubling up as the supporting roles. As there are too many to mention individually, I would like to compliment them on their excellent clear vocals which meant that the audience knew exactly what was going on and at no time did their level of performance drop. Much is usually said about the principals in a show but with this musical, without a strong ensemble and choir, much of the story would be lost.

Quasimodo is fascinating to portray as he has to deal with the challenges of a non-normative body and hearing loss and it would be incredibly easy to turn this into more of a pantomime character instead of the poor socially isolated person he needs to be.  Steven Blower managed to get the characterisation just right with a strong vocal in ‘Out There’. Esmerelda, played by Janine Henderson, sang beautifully in the extremely moving ‘God Help The Outcasts’ and ‘Someday’ in which she was joined by Dan Holyhead who, as Phoebus, gave us a strong portrayal of this character.

Another complex character is Frollo, a man who blames the gypsies for the death of his beloved brother Jehan and who keeps Johan’s son Quasimodo locked in the bell tower because of his deformities. His obsession with Esmerelda leads him to believe that she is a demon sent to tempt him. Again, there is a danger that this could be hammed up but the part was handled very well by Paul Westcott. Lastly, we need to mention Dan McCloskey as Clopin, The King of The Gypsies.

Backed up by great choreography, costumes and lighting, this was an excellent production. My only criticism would be that backing tracks were used instead of a live band which did, at times, lead to pauses in the dialogue whilst the music caught up, but I understand that this is a huge cost for a company to bear and is only a little niggle!

Well done to all at Trinity Players, this was a huge musical to master. I look forward to meeting you all again soon.

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