(no subject)
Oct. 2nd, 2018 09:42 pmThose of you who have been around here for a while will remember how much I love the French musical Notre-Dame de Paris. I love it SO much that when ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
genarti and I went to go see the 20th-anniversary version in Montreal this weekend I could answer all her plot questions about blink-and-you-miss-it plot events in the show, despite the fact that she speaks French and I don't.
(Notre-Dame de Paris the musical does not care about plot. Notre-Dame de Paris the musical cares about FEELINGS and DIGRESSIONS. Gringoire and Frollo singing philosophically about architecture and the printing press gets four and a half minutes; the trial of Esmeralda takes ninety seconds.)
Anyway: it was amazing? Our Esmeralda was SO GOOD, I could have just sat and listened to her sing the whole dang thing. And, unlike the original cast Esmeralda, she occasionally danced!
In most ways, the production looked essentially identical to the recorded version, which I have watched many times and lovingly picspammed a few years back because, again, I have a lot of feelings about this show. Any changes were pretty much small and cast-driven. A few disconnected notes:
- our Gringoire played much more hapless than the original Gringoire; Gringoire Classic mostly succeeds at being an ironic commentator on events except when Clopin turns the joke on him in "Cour des Miracles," and this Gringoire was Trying a Lot Harder at being on top of events and Succeeding Less
- Esmeralda, in addition to just being a wildly charismatic actress, played younger and more naive, which I liked a lot; Fleur-de-Lys, in contrast, played older, which I did not like, as it made her seem very much in control of her whole situation, when the whole point of making Fleur-de-Lys textually fourteen in the musical rather than the grown woman she is in Hugo's novel is to emphasize how much she too is a victim of Phoebus (in specific) and The Patriarchy (in general) but lashes down (at Esmeralda, a woman with less privilege) instead of up
- so many cute little Esmeralda and Clopin moments in this production! They high-five during "Les Sans-Papiers," he helps her get water for Quasimodo and then encourages her when she's scared, it's ADORABLE
- as a sidenote, this Clopin was good but not as good as Luck Mervil, who is just charisma on wheels
- seeing the show live makes it very clear how weird the pacing is -- like, there's all this high drama of Esmeralda's trial and torture and imprisonment and then! everything stops! so Frollo can sing a sad song!
- honestly THREE Frollo songs about his boner for Esmeralda is WAY too many and at least one of those should be replaced with some actual Frollo-Quasimodo interaction
- I did remember the gyrating Speedo-clad men who appear spotlit in the background to illustrate Phoebus' emotional state during "Déchiré;" I did not remember that there were FIVE of them! It's like the part when the glistening Jason Stathams start multiplying in that one music video!
- Frollo getting attacked by scenery during "Tu Vas Me Detruire" is pretty much exactly the same onstage (thoughgenarti thought the scenery was SLIGHTLY less aggressive in the live production) but remains hilarious no matter what
All gyrating Stathams and attack scenery aside, a thing I do want to reiterate is that the creators of this show took an iconic but deeply racist and sexist nineteenth-century novel and transformed it into a call for justice for refugees and undocumented people, like, that is the most important theme in this musical; I've been wanting to see it for the past fifteen years but 2018 is definitely A Time to do so.
genarti and I went to go see the 20th-anniversary version in Montreal this weekend I could answer all her plot questions about blink-and-you-miss-it plot events in the show, despite the fact that she speaks French and I don't.(Notre-Dame de Paris the musical does not care about plot. Notre-Dame de Paris the musical cares about FEELINGS and DIGRESSIONS. Gringoire and Frollo singing philosophically about architecture and the printing press gets four and a half minutes; the trial of Esmeralda takes ninety seconds.)
Anyway: it was amazing? Our Esmeralda was SO GOOD, I could have just sat and listened to her sing the whole dang thing. And, unlike the original cast Esmeralda, she occasionally danced!
In most ways, the production looked essentially identical to the recorded version, which I have watched many times and lovingly picspammed a few years back because, again, I have a lot of feelings about this show. Any changes were pretty much small and cast-driven. A few disconnected notes:
- our Gringoire played much more hapless than the original Gringoire; Gringoire Classic mostly succeeds at being an ironic commentator on events except when Clopin turns the joke on him in "Cour des Miracles," and this Gringoire was Trying a Lot Harder at being on top of events and Succeeding Less
- Esmeralda, in addition to just being a wildly charismatic actress, played younger and more naive, which I liked a lot; Fleur-de-Lys, in contrast, played older, which I did not like, as it made her seem very much in control of her whole situation, when the whole point of making Fleur-de-Lys textually fourteen in the musical rather than the grown woman she is in Hugo's novel is to emphasize how much she too is a victim of Phoebus (in specific) and The Patriarchy (in general) but lashes down (at Esmeralda, a woman with less privilege) instead of up
- so many cute little Esmeralda and Clopin moments in this production! They high-five during "Les Sans-Papiers," he helps her get water for Quasimodo and then encourages her when she's scared, it's ADORABLE
- as a sidenote, this Clopin was good but not as good as Luck Mervil, who is just charisma on wheels
- seeing the show live makes it very clear how weird the pacing is -- like, there's all this high drama of Esmeralda's trial and torture and imprisonment and then! everything stops! so Frollo can sing a sad song!
- honestly THREE Frollo songs about his boner for Esmeralda is WAY too many and at least one of those should be replaced with some actual Frollo-Quasimodo interaction
- I did remember the gyrating Speedo-clad men who appear spotlit in the background to illustrate Phoebus' emotional state during "Déchiré;" I did not remember that there were FIVE of them! It's like the part when the glistening Jason Stathams start multiplying in that one music video!
- Frollo getting attacked by scenery during "Tu Vas Me Detruire" is pretty much exactly the same onstage (though
genarti thought the scenery was SLIGHTLY less aggressive in the live production) but remains hilarious no matter what All gyrating Stathams and attack scenery aside, a thing I do want to reiterate is that the creators of this show took an iconic but deeply racist and sexist nineteenth-century novel and transformed it into a call for justice for refugees and undocumented people, like, that is the most important theme in this musical; I've been wanting to see it for the past fifteen years but 2018 is definitely A Time to do so.
