Wherever Houston Broadway Theatre appears, it should erect a lighting rod on the roof because its fiery productions set the space ablaze.
The Hobby’s Zilkha Hall is still smoldering after HBT’s searing premiere Next to Normal (2024). Its cult hit American Psycho (2025) almost burned the place down. Now the Wortham’s Cullen Theater should boost their fire insurance after this company’s production of Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It’s a conflagration.
Victor Hugo’s mammoth gothic novel was an odd choice for a Disney cartoon (1996), and the money men at the studio were apprehensive to say the least. Disney’s trademark was family friendly, G-rated entertainment with talking animals, snappy fairy godmothers, princesses whose prince will come, and fairy tale endings. Hugo’s medieval tome is dark and heavy, with a deformed bell ringer, a gypsy dancer, a libidinous priest, and a bevy of outcast thieves and mountebanks.
It’s also overflowing with repressed sex, religious hypocrisy, and the powerful theme of unwanted immigration. This is not Disney territory. But after hearing an audition of the Alan Menken and Steven Schwartz songs, along with animator’s sketches of vertiginous Parisian vistas from the parapets of Notre Dame, the studio green lighted the project and the movie became one of the top-10 money earners of the year.
However, even with this success, Disney Theatrical wasn’t convinced to adapt the movie to the stage, although their former two productions were the mega hits Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. Considering dropping the Disney credit so families would not be put off by this dank tale, nevertheless the production went forward and premiered in Berlin (1999) to full houses and ran for three years.
Still Disney wavered. It took another 15 years of adapting, tampering, arranging, new songs, until an English language version followed in 2014 for its American premiere at San Diego’s La Jolla Playhouse and New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse. Rewritten by Peter Parnell, this version is closer to Hugo than Disney with the elimination of those annoying comic gargoyles, a truer ending where Esmeralda dies, and an epilogue taken verbatim from the novel. It’s still unlike any other Disney product for the stage, thunderous in its operatic score, unstinting in the sexual desires of Dom Frollo, and abridged with exposition by Clopin, the King of Thieves, and various choristers. It’s still not a show for the kids, except mature ones, but it’s terribly effective and emotionally heart wrenching.
Hunchback is yet to see the lights of Broadway, which is a shame, because HBT’s magnificently produced version is made for the Great White Way. I’m ready for my closeup, Mr. Zeigfeld.
Minimally designed by Tim Macabee with a simple mobile elegance that uses a signature gigantic lacy rose window dropping down from the flies for interiors of the mighty cathedral, enhanced by wondrous projections by Greg Emetaz of buttresses, architectural details, and then clouds and flames and stars in the background; truly atmospheric lighting by Tyler Micoleau; and Joanna Pan’s costumes that are part-grunge, part-gym wear, but a winning contemporary fusion of medieval and today; and the absolute finesse and sensitivity of director Joe Calarco, there’s a whole lot of creativity on display.
But the show’s crowning glory, outside of Menken’s Wagnerian score, is its orchestra of 21, a chorus of 29, and an ensemble cast of 20! Holy Hugo, this is mammoth. Not even a touring Broadway show these days possesses such munificence. It is stunning to hear its blasts of pseudo-Gregorian chant, hellfire, love ballads, and all-cylinder Broadway belt. This is Menken’s most opulent score, radiantly performed under maestro Andrew Orbison. Cullen Theater rings out loud and clear.
But what’s a great looking show without a cast to inhabit it. These mostly young performers – some Broadway veterans – are top-notch talents all the way, starting with Tyce Green HBT’s president of the board, in an exceptionally moving performance as Quasimodo, the reclusive deaf and deformed bell ringer who lives in the turrets among his beloved bells. He first appears as your average chorus boy in green shirt and black pants. His head a tousle of curls. When introduced in the opening number, the invigorating “The Bells of Notre Dame,” as his story enfolds, his shirt is removed, his arms jerk into broken angles, and on his back is a stencil of Notre Dame’s rose window where his hump should be. What a perfect image to describe him, visual poetry. An exceptional actor and singer, you never take your eyes off him, even when he hides in the shadows when he escapes his sanctuary and then mockingly becomes the King of Fools. Besotted by gypsy Esmeralda (a sensual and lovely voiced Veronica Otim) after she rescues him from the vicious tortures of the mob, he painfully melts into the very humane person he is underneath his hideous exterior. Green’s performance is a standout and will break your heart.
Alvin Crawford, as lascivious Dom Frollo, has a voice from the depths of hell – booming and full of hate. His character is irredeemably evil, pious outside, demonic inward. His Verdian credo, “Hellfire,” is bathed in blood-red lighting and outlined with flames whose heat you can almost feel. He sings his poison with terrible truthfulness. He gets a fitting comeuppance at show’s end. The King of Thieves, Clopin, is a sinuous Diego Guevara with a voice of steel and the moves of an experienced tom cat. He prowls the stage, while he struts through Hope Easterbrook’s juicy choreography or swings around the metal scaffolding like an Astaire. He is a prime song-and-dance man, full of presence.
If you want a picture book soldier, look no farther than chiseled Alec Niven with his seductive pop-star tenor as Phoebus, a virtual sun god who falls hard for Esmeralda. His golden breastplate is apt costuming. He croons Menken’s stirring duet with Esmeralda, “Someday,” with suave timing and timbre. Embraced by those biceps, enveloped in his golden voice, how could she refuse?
Hunchback is yet another nonpareil show from Houston Broadway Theatre. It’s only their third production, but what a batting average – 100 percent. Does any other company in Houston compare with its inventiveness, cutting edge design sense, celestial performing, philharmonic musical quality, or innate style? It’s as if HBT has thrown down a gauntlet for all the others. Rise to our standards, if you dare.
HBT’s next show is William Finn’s gay cult hit musical Falsettos at Hobby Center’s Zilhka Hall, July 28 through August 16. Will lightning strike again?
The Hunchback of Notre Dame continues through July 5 at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays; 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturdays; and 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sundays at the Cullen Theater at the Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas. For more information call 800-982-2787or visit houstonbroadwaytheatre.org $52-$195.
