Review: The Hunchback of Notre Dam

By Alex Gordon,

Upon entering the near-1000-year-old Selby Abbey, I could not help but think that, other than the York Minster itself, Belt Up could not have chosen a better local landmark for their production of ‘Hunchback.’ Jethro Compton (Producer, Writer and co-Artistic Director) has created a very condensed adaptation of Victor Hugo’s epic gothic novel. This is no bad thing, as Compton has taken the core characters, themes and events of the story to tell a simplified version that tells of Quasimodo’s tortured, unrequited love for La Esmeralda, whilst retaining a strong element of darkness.

Despite having an astounding back-drop to be performed in, Compton’s script still relies on the power of language to tell a story; the words of the characters conjuring up verbal images for the audience. One particularly poignant image is Esmeralda’s description of love between two people being akin to that of two grains of sand in a dessert briefly settling next to each other after a storm, before another gust of wind blows them apart again. Whether images such as these are lifted from Hugo’s work or are Compton’s own creation, they are to the script’s credit.

The play however, does stray into unchartered territory away from the novel, as Quasimodo, both as participant and puppeteer, begins to put words in the mouths of the characters and manipulate the story towards his own design. Though an interesting twist, I am not sure it needed to go down this route, as the original material is dark and harrowing enough to still be dramatic.

The actors, being only four in number, have their work cut out for them. As well as playing the central characters of Quasimodo (Sam Donnelly), Archdeacon Frollo (Dominic Allen), La Esmeralda (Serena Manteghi) and Captain Phoebus (Oliver Tilney), the latter three also multi-roll as a masked-menagerie of fools, gypsies and other characters.

I wasn’t sure about this ‘masked’ aspect of the performance. It seemed that in order to fully re-create the ‘feast of fools’, they needed more actors to fill the space in front of and around the audience. Although I am not against breaking the fourth wall, the way in which they did this didn’t add anything to the story and seemed to create more discomfort in the audience than it relieved.

However, they were, for the most part, all proficient in their central rolls. Notably, Donnelly’s Quasimodo was a convincing transformation into a deformed man desperately longing for human affection, his physicalization altering between a vulnerable obsequiousness and an alarming, animal-like swiftness. Allen’s malicious, puritanical Frollo, in his sexual craving for Esmeralda, served as a chilling reminder that human deformities can be all the greater on the inside.

There is a fifth performer however; one who never speaks yet whose presence is always felt. Just as the lives of the characters in Hugo’s novel revolve around the world of Notre Dame Cathedral, so do the performances revolve around and depend on the magnificent structure of the Abbey to breathe life into the story.

Music also plays an integral part in creating the atmosphere with an original underscore and songs by Gavin Whitworth, combined with choral performances by the Abbey Belles and Selby Abbey Choir. A haunting touch, especially in the respective surroundings. The songs though, all sung by Esmeralda, didn’t do anything to progress the plot or feel necessary in light of the play’s other musical components.

Truly, Belt Up’s ‘Hunchback’ is a testament to the power of a piece of theatre to be transformed by its surroundings. There is an imbalance however, when the play relies too heavily on its surroundings to be a success. Were it to be performed in any other setting than one as grand or archaic as the Abbey, I am not sure how well it would translate.

Having said that, it is fantastic and also important to see theatre performed in places other than theatres, and the extent to which they have attracted a local as well as a student audience is proof that there is a public interest for it.

Listen out for Alex's full audio review on the ((URY PLAYER)).