Ayana Beatrice Poblete’s Esmerelda in Black Sheep Theatre Productions’ The Hunchback Of Notre Dame. All pictures: Ryan Healey
THIS is Black Sheep Theatre Productions’ biggest show – by far. Company founder and director Matthew Peter Clare has assembled five leads, an ensemble of seven and a choir of 23; numbers to match the grandeur of Notre Dame cathedral.
Alas ticket booking has not been of a matching scale: last Thursday’s first night and Sunday’s two shows were pulled, and maybe Black Sheep are unfortunate to be playing against the irresistible tidal wave of SIX The Musical’s sold-out return to the Grand Opera House this week.
Or, sometimes, who knows why, a show just does not light a flame at the box office, but in the case of ‘Hunchback’, that is baffling. Both Victor Hugo’s 1831 source novel and Disney’s animated 1996 film are ever popular, and the stage show is all the better for adding more Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz songs and for being closer in tone to the book.
Imagine a show more aligned to the dramatic heft and impassioned song of another French tale, Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s Les Miserables, et voila, ‘Hunchback’.
The people of Paris taunting Jack James Fry’s Quasimodo in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame
“Our mission has been art with a point,” says Clare, who relocated Black Sheep to York in 2022 from Lancashire beginnings. “Art that matters and art that connects with the human experience, in its glories or its pain.”
In those words in his programme note, you can hear his zeal for making theatre that “speaks to the heart of everyone watching” and see why he wanted to present ‘Hunchback’ as his next big challenge, one that could not be more topically timed in light of the rising intolerance of immigrants and “otherness”.
Clare’s resulting choral production is not only his largest but his most ambitious too, hence the big cast that must be accommodated on the JoRo stage, making their entry, heads covered, in cloaks, mysterious and full of foreboding.
Like a church building, he has kept much of the stage bare, save for scaffolding that provides a mezzanine level for the cathedral bell tower and a row of church pews to either side below.
Robbie Wallwork’s Captain Phoebus in an ensemble number in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame
The choir either stands behind them or beneath the scaffolding, in view but always rather distant, to the extent that it is not always clear who is singing when it is a solo voice.
Furthermore, on press night, that individual singing could not always be heard, although one should make allowance for technical tweaks to remedy what is a difficult sound balance with so many players on the fringes of the stage.
I stress, however, that there was no deficiency in commitment, and the presence of a choir adds a new element to Black Sheep. Hopefully, their impact can be at full throttle for the rest of the run in Ollie Nash’s sound design.
Clare is an audaciously talented musical director, and here he leads his 13-strong band through the intricacies of Menken’s score with elan. Every gorgeous note, every soaring climax, breathes with passion and the highly technical playing is beautifully balanced, heart-felt, dynamic, moving.
At the double: Jack James Fry as Quasimodo and Dan Poppitt as the Voice of Quasimodo, a five-star partnership at the heart of Black Sheep Theatre Productions’ show
The big talking point, the big selling point too, is the role of Quasimodo, here impeded more by loss of hearing from all that bell ringing than his bodily disfigurement that does not rob him of his extraordinary physical strength. He is isolated by his powers to communicate being so denuded.
Quasimodo is played by two actors; one, the deaf Jack James Fry, being his physical embodiment, utilising British Sign Language that has sound and fury, but huge human heart too, signifying everything as Quasimodo craves understanding and acceptance. He can sure swing a bell rope too.
The other, Dan Poppitt, is Quasimodo’s voice, interpreting the sign language in speech and song by Fry’s side. Poppitt has been a rising light on the York stage as Tunny in Green Day’s American Idiot, Alonso in The Tempest and Roger in Rent. Now he rises higher still, whether mirroring Fry’s movements or in the show’s most powerful, dramatic singing. What a magnetic, heartbreaking partnership he and Fry make.
Quasimodo’s fellow “outsider”, the gypsy dancer Esmerelda, is played with fearless fervour by Filipino-born Ayana Beatrice Poblete, while Emily Pratt’s Florika has the show’s outstanding female voice, classically pure in tone.
Jack James Fry’s Quasimodo and Emily Pratt’s Florika
Robbie Wallwork’s Captain Phoebus, caught between the romantic heroic figure of the Disney film and the flash vainglorious womaniser of Hugo’s novel, favours the former but his performance could be more assertive.
James Robert Ball, ever nimble, quick, light as a Malteser, recalls his Puck in York Stage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in May, taking the narrator’s role as Clopin Trouillefou, jester, Romani leader and Festival of Fools master of ceremonies, but this time beneath the mischief-making front lies a darker soul, saddened by experience, closer to Cabaret’s Emcee.
Clare plays the joker in casting Jack Hooper as the turbulent Judge Claude Frollo, the embittered Minister of Justice and guardian of Quasimodo.
From such roles as bubbly Mr Poppy in Nativity and the profusely sweaty cop Eddie Souther in Sister Act, we know of his comic prowess, but now he switches to the dark side in a transition to rival Alan Carr’s treachery in Celebrity Traitors. Hell fire, villainy suits him in his buttoned-up, suppressive air, the balloon popper of the piece, topped off by his raging version of Hellfire.
Darkness descends: Jack Hooper’s volte face into villainy as Judge Claude Frollo
In a further directorial decision that pays off, the full “carcase” of the stage is left exposed, and so we can see the flymen, Jon Drewry and Georgia Legg, in action on the ropes, pulling both a stained glass window and three bells of Notre Dame into view, matching Quasimodo’s own rope work.
Adam Kirkwood’s lighting design works best in scenes of close-up focus but less so for the choir, lost in the shadows. Charlie Clarke’s choreography, however draws the production forward to fill the stage with life in big numbers, as if in defiance of Frollo.
Take a hunch by ignoring the disappointing box office so far and booking to see the Hunchback, especially for Fry & Poppitt.
Black Sheep Theatre Productions in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, 7.30pm, Tuesday to Saturday, plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 501395 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
James Robert Ball’s Clopin Trouillefou and Ayana Beatrice Poblete’s Esmerelda at the Court of Miracles in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame