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Writing The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Victor Hugo found inspiration in medieval architecture. Working down from its gothic towers and silent gargoyles, he resurrected a rowdy Paris whose underworld of beggars, thieves and gypsies carried on vital relationship to the exalted Christian topside. Hunchback gave artistic form to the theories Hugo outlined in his preface to Cromwell (1827): to push beyond neoclassicism's "idealized nature" by marrying the sublime and the grotesque in a harmony of opposites. In Hunchback, the human kaleidoscope turns, revealing the contrary grimaces of the "bete humaine."
Hugo glamorized the medievals, and the scenes of collective spectacle--carnival, theatre, torture and public execution--which drive the novel's labyrinthine plot have provided fodder for countless stage opera and film adaptations (most of which have tamed the unruly aspects of Hugo's vision in accordance with popular taste).
Don't expect Cinemascope
"When you say The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, people think, 'Yeah, I know that," says Robert Rosen, director of Theatre de la Jeune Lune's current adaptation, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame 1482. "They might not really know it, but maybe they've seen images from the movies. So we're fighting a lot of preconceptions." Written by Rosen, Paul Walsh and Steven Epp, the production runs at the Minneapolis-based company's cavernous warehouse-turned theatre through Feb. 11.
Expecting Cinemascope, I am shocked to see Jeune Lune's set, a nearly unadorned theatre-in-the-round. The space feels small and cramped. There is not a gargoyle...