THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME
Directed and choreographed by Michael Pink. Original score by Philip Feeney. Set and costume design by Lez Brotherston. Lighting by Paul Pyant. Musical direction by Jonathan McPhee. Presented by Boston Ballet at the Wang Theatre through April 8

The good news first: The Hunchback of Notre Dame is no Cleopatra or Dracula. Unlike those abortions from the past two seasons, this dance/theater extravaganza, which comes to Boston Ballet from England’s Northern Ballet Theatre, has legitimate aspirations to be a ballet blockbuster. The book is by Victor Hugo — what could be more legitimate than the great 19th-century French realist? And like any stage presentation this Hunchback has its own director, Michael Pink, who did the choreography and worked with the composer of the original score, Philip Feeney. The result is a great piece of theatrical entertainment but not a great ballet — certainly not one on the order of the company’s Romeo and Juliet (Choo San Goh or Daniel Pelzig version) or its John Cranko Onegin. And when outgoing artistic director Anna-Marie Holmes writes that this Hunchback of Notre Dame points to the future of the art of ballet, I start to worry about that future. Hunchback is to genuine ballet what Les Misérables is to genuine theater.

What makes a great ballet? Well, great music helps — the three Tchaikovsky classics, Prokofiev’s Cinderella and Romeo and Juliet, just about anything Balanchine did — though Giselle proves you can manage with less. Feeney’s eclectic score is atmospheric and touches a lot of bases: Petrushka (the piano-and-percussion evocation of the Feast of Fools), Berlioz, Dvorák (the New World Symphony when Quasimodo is about to throw Dom Claude over the balustrade), Elgar, Respighi, Prokofiev, Bernard Herrmann, West Side Story, (when a spotlit Esmeralda gives the flogged Quasimodo some water, the cellos all but break into “There’s a Place for Us”), The Poseidon Adventure, taped plainchant, mediæval chansons, and bells, bells, bells. There’s a motivic instrument for each major character: cello for Quasimodo, flute for Gypsy girl Esmeralda, trumpet for Captain Phœbus, trombone for archdeacon Dom Claude Frollo. The result is enjoyable to listen to, especially when Feeney scales back for dramatic effect, which he often does; but after attending three performances (well played by the Boston Ballet Orchestra) and listening carefully to the Northern Ballet Theatre Orchestra CD (also excellent), I can’t remember a single note. This score illustrates rather than making a statement of its own — perhaps if Feeney had stayed with one style (the mediæval/Renaissance music that opens the ballet brings the cathedral into play) instead of sampling many . . .

Illustration is also the problem with Michael Pink’s choreography. There are two Gypsy solos for Esmeralda and a couple of enticing pas de deux for Esmeralda and Phœbus plus a mediæval-flavored one for Phœbus and his fiancée, Fleur-de-Lys. There’s a “fight” pas de trois in the third act when Dom Claude tries to take Esmeralda from Quasimodo, as well as a formal, period-flavored dance for Fleur-de-lys and her friends and some high-kicking (I kept thinking of Oklahoma!) shenanigans for the thieves and tarts at the Pomme d’Ève. Most of the remainder is what used to be called mime but in the parlance of this production is considered acting. That’s a reasonable distinction, and God knows Boston Ballet is (and has long been) graced with dancers who can act. Even good thespians, however, can do only so much with stereotypes.

And that’s the challenge for any adaptation of Hugo’s novel. The French title is Notre-Dame de Paris (that’s right, no hunchback), and the great Gothic cathedral is indeed Hugo’s central character. Pawns in Fate’s game of chess/chance, Quasimodo, Esmeralda, Phœbus, Dom Claude, and poet Pierre Gringoire don’t grow and learn; it’s only the writing that gives them depth. But it’s hardly feasible to transfer Notre-Dame — what Hugo called “a symphony in stone” — to the stage, and without that positive center, you have just the negative human accompaniments: beastly Quasimodo, brutal Dom Claude, womanizing Phœbus, venal Pierre, and pathetic, silly Esmeralda.

The two cinematic versions of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1922 and 1939) have great performances by Lon Chaney and Charles Laughton, respectively, and not much else. The 1996 Disney animation used the visual power of its medium to put Notre-Dame front and center, and the cathedral bestowed its blessings, redeeming Phœbus, allowing Quasimodo to rescue Esmeralda from the hangman, and turning that bloodthirsty Place de Grève mob into the embodiment of Liberté, Égalité, and Fraternité. Pink respects Hugo’s pessimism and obsession with detail, but he does leave out Dom Claude’s lay brother Jehan, and Esmeralda’s mother, and, worst of all, Djali. I realize it’s not easy to choreograph for a goat, but if Boston Ballet wants to join the elite, shouldn’t it rise to this kind of challenge? Seriously: Hugo uses Esmeralda’s pet to help define her personality — and in the end Pierre Gringoire’s as well (the poet saves Djali and leaves the Gypsy to her fate). The folks at Disney understood this so well that they came up with a horse to do the same for Phœbus.

There are innumerable felicities in this production. The curtain rises on a black-and-white photo of the cathedral’s façade, across which giant shadows flit, as if the gargoyles had come to life; and for a few seconds we see the rose window in all its glory (it flickers again, muted, at the start of the third act). Lez Brotherston’s set keeps turning crosses into gibbets (check the slanting scaffolding in the Court of Miracles, and the clothes stands in Fleur-de-Lys’s house). It’s touching when, after Dom Claude denounces the Feast of Fools and orders Quasimodo back the cathedral, the hunchback retrieves his King of Fools cap and shakes it, the bells reminding him of his belfry. Or when, after Quasimodo has rescued her, Esmeralda, trying to thank him, does the natural thing: she reads his palm. Then there’s the moment where, after their “Gypsy marriage,” Pierre Gringoire chugs down a bottle of wine while Esmeralda looks at the scarf that Phœbus has given her and dreams. And the one where, after watching Phœbus flirt with Esmeralda, Fleur-de-Lys gives him the cold shoulder and dares him to leave — then crumbles when he does. Gorgeous details, but they breathe only momentary life into Hugo’s creations. Hunchback’s choreographic (and musical) high points are the two pas deux for Phœbus and Esmeralda, but how high can they rise when we’re pretty sure that Phœbus intends to seduce Esmeralda and then marry Fleur-de-Lys? Toward the end of the second act a reconciled (and newlywed?) Phœbus and Fleur promenade past the Christ-like condemned Esmeralda and then disappear from the ballet, stranding her in a villain’s version of The Perils of Pauline.

It really isn’t bad, but Boston Ballet’s dancers deserve better. With his shambling, almost simian walk (Hugo calls his hero “some sort of combined monkey and chamois”), Paul Thrussell creates a feral Quasimodo who’s no Beauty and the Beast teddy bear — I never felt I was watching a regular guy in a hunchback costume, as I occasionally did with Reagan Messer and Christopher Budzynski. Larissa Ponomarenko stretches Esmeralda into a song of innocence looking for experience (she’s genuinely shocked when she gets a good look at Quasimodo’s face); Adriana Suárez and Lyn Tally find mostly experience, though both create a nice balance between yielding and suspicion in their pas de deux with Phœbus. Thrussell and Simon Ball are both persuasively gallant — and two-faced — as the captain; I didn’t detect much difference, so either my eye is deficient or the role needs to grow to meet these dancers’ expressive particulars. With her inviting carriage (just look at those shoulders) Christina Elida Salerno’s Fleur-de-Lys hints at reserves of sex that go beyond anything Esmeralda is able to convey in her Gypsy dance (Fleur’s own pas de deux with Phœbus draws on the volta, an Italian dance from the 16th century), and her distress at her fiancé’s attentions to Esmeralda are unnervingly palpable. It’s Jennifer Glaze, however, who makes the most of Phœbus’s departure, her face and posture bespeaking the knowledge that she herself drove him away.

Guest artist Denis Malinkin (from Atlanta Ballet) and Simon Ball portray a spidery Dom Claude who’s all anguish and repressed ecstasy; they’re effective but not very different, which again makes me think the role is underwritten. Too bad Pink doesn’t give Dom Claude a solo in which to dance out his amour fou — or Phœbus one through which he could convey his romantic ambivalence. Pierre Gringoire is here a shadowy coward who sells out Esmeralda for money; José Martin and Gianni Di Marco do all that can be done. As the vagabond denizens of the Court of Miracles/Pomme d’Ève, the corps is a thrashing, copulating, chaotic mass of humanity; the mess that Pink crafts around the production’s edges would serve better if there were more than melodrama at its center.

What’s frustrating is that Boston Ballet does have better in the vault: Romeo and Juliet, Onegin, The Taming of the Shrew, any number of Balanchine works (anyone seen Mozartiana lately?). None of those three story ballets will be emerging next season, but we will get Balanchine’s Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, along with the Bruce Marks/Bruce Wells Midsummer Night’s Dream (set to Mendelssohn, and always welcome), Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo, the Giselle that incoming/outgoing artistic director Maina Gielgud did for the Australian Ballet, and the Madame Butterfly that Stanton Welch choreographed for the Australian Ballet back in 1995. Although it’s a good season that interim artistic coordinator Jonathan McPhee has put together, it leaves open the question where this company is heading. For the answer, we’ll have to wait until Boston Ballet comes up with an artistic director.

Issue Date: April 5-12, 2001