Hunchback of Notre Dame

The Hunchback of Notre Dame begins in a bell tower, where a boy has been raised out of sight by the man who took him in and taught him to be ashamed of himself. Quasimodo wants one day outside. He gets it, and it costs everyone.

Below, a festival is running, and a dancer named Esmeralda shows him the first kindness anyone has offered. Frollo, his guardian and a man of the church, wants her too, and cannot hold both his faith and his desire in the same hand. Phoebus, a soldier, is caught between orders and conscience. From there the story tightens into a chase in which the crowd is as dangerous as any single character.

The score is by Alan Menken with lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Peter Parnell, drawing on the 1996 animated film and going back to Victor Hugo's 1831 novel for its ending. A German-language version ran for years from 1999; the English-language staging arrived in 2014 and has been produced widely since. It is written to be sung by a full choir alongside the cast.

It is far darker than the animated version. The comic gargoyles are gone and the ending is Hugo's. The music is choral and enormous, the writing is unafraid of religion as a subject, and the central question, which is who counts as a monster, is asked seriously rather than rhetorically.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame suits audiences who want a big score attached to a story with real weight. It is written for people willing to sit with a sad ending, and it tends to leave a room very quiet.