The French musical Notre Dame de Paris was i New York City for a limited engagement earlier this month. It was something that I remember hearing about and seeing quite a bit about during trips to both France and Quebec back in the late nineties. I found them intriguing, and kept wondering when they might play again at a time and a place where I could actually go. Well, that finally happened earlier this month.
I first heard about it some months ago, and wanted to jump on the chance to get tickets early. After all, you can never tell how hot a show might get, like Hamilton in recent years, or the Blue Man Group some years ago. I managed to get two cheap tickets ($27 each before the extra surcharges). Overall, I paid just under $80 for the tickets, and was happy with that price. As it turns out, there was no rush, because the number and level of empty seats was rather astonishing. A little sad as well, I might add, because it is a great musical play.
Now for full disclosure, I will admit to not generally being a huge fan of musicals. In fact, by and large, I tend to turn them off when I notice that a movie is a musical. There was a point when I was intrigued by them a bit, particularly after seeing my very first Broadway show during a high school trip. That was Les Misérables, and it was the main feature of a French class trip that I took during my senior year back in the early nineties. We also went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, so it was a very cool day. But the play I found exciting and moving. It was very good, and I had the mistaken impression that all plays must be comparably good. I went to a few more over the years - Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Blue Man Group, Stomp - and none of them were as good or powerful. Truth be told, none of them even came close to that.
Well, Notre Dame de Paris does not top it, either. However, it comes as close as anything that I have seen. Perhaps this should not be a surprise, since this play is based on a novel by Victor Hugo, the same author who wrote Les Misérables. This is, of course, based on The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It thus focuses on many things, juggles a lot simultaneously. It is about the polarizing times, taking place in the late 1400's, ight around the Notre Dame Cathedral on the Île de la Cité in Paris. This is a time of cathedrals, of massive structures being constructed, attempting to bring humanity closer to God. However, it is also.a time when science was challenging religion like never before, when sailors and explorers were setting around the globe to try and prove, once and for all, that the Earth was round. Martin Luther had posted his 95 theses, and Europe was beginning to be increasingly divided on the question of religion. And perhaps most threatening of all to the power of the church was the recent invention of Gutenberg's printing press, which would make books and pamphlets widely available, allowing a flood of information to the masses, which also threatened both the monarchy and the church.
With all of that as a backdrop, the play is mostly about the famous hunchback, Quasimodo, a hideously deformed, but ultimately quite decent, title character to the book, and main character for this play. He is tortured and made to suffer for his physical deformity, time and time again publicly ridiculed and humiliated. However, one stunningly beautiful woman, Esmeralda, shows him kindness and provides some comfort and relief during one of his humiliations, and he falls hopelessly in love with her from that point onwards. But others love her also, including Captain Phoebus, and Frollo, Archdeacon of Notre Dame, who is a lot less outright villainous in this particular version of the story than he is often portrayed otherwise. Then on top of all of this, she is married to the poet (and the main narrator of this play, if you will), Pierre Gringore, although it is not a real marriage, and there is neither love nor passion in it.
Frollo is, ultimately, the main architect of Esmeralda's ultimate demise. He states that his two loves in life, at least prior to falling in love with the stunning Esmeralda, are God and science. However, these two loves are conflicted, and he finds himself torn quite a bit by the challenge that science is providing to the Church that he has dedicated his life to. Then on top of it, falling in love with a woman - which is strictly forbidden according to his professed faith and position - proves to be too much. He loves and desires her, yet also resents her for the feelings, and the doubts, that she has stirred within him, unbeknownst to her, of course. Then Phoebus, the dashing captain who saved Esmeralda, but is engaged to another woman, is quite taken by Esmeralda's beauty, but ultimately just uses her for his gratification. Ultimately, he is more interested in doing his duty, which is in large part to clear the city streets of Paris of those widely regarded as undocumented outsiders.
Ultimately, it is the hideously ugly Quasimodo who proves to be the most impressive and even beautiful on the inside. His love for Esmeralda is ultimately the purest and most honest. He neither wants to use her for his own gratification, like Phoebus, nor resents her for his hopeless love, like Frollo. That makes his heartbreak at the end all the more heartbreaking.
Again, I still believe that Les Misérables is the best musical that I have seen or know of. This does not exactly top that one, but it is nevertheless very good. Good enough, in fact, to make this my second favorite musical, and well worth seeing! This is the last weekend that this play is in New York. Not sure if there is anyone on the fence regarding possibly seeing Notre Dame de Paris on this final weekend when it is in the Big Apple who might read this. But if there is, or if you have some other opportunity to see this, it comes highly recommended!
Below are some of the pictures that I took relating to the show. This includes the large banner hanging from the outside wall of the Lincoln Center, as well as a few pictures of the very end of the show, when the performers take a bow. They were quite strict with no pictures or video to be taken, so I just took these last few pictures right at the end, which give away almost nothing about it, and seemed harmless enough. Again, highly recommended!
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