Working on a hunch to stage classic hunchback tale

A young theatre company tackles Victor Hugo's tragic love tale of ugliness and beauty, writes FIONA HAWTIN.

Victor Hugo's tale about the monstrous hunchback who falls for the beautiful gypsy girl Esmerelda is a classic story of ugly guy almost gets the girl.

It's not just Hollywood that finds that sort of plot irresistible. However, most people know The Hunchback of Notre-Dame from the many film versions, rather than the 1831 novel Notre-Dame de Paris. Even Disney did an animated version.

The fact that the tragic love story is legendary yet so few people are familiar with the novel is partly what attracted Theatre Stampede to do a theatre adaptation.

The starting point was the text, which Hugo wrote as much for the moral triumph of good over evil, as for his passion for Gothic architecture, says co-director Ben Crowder.

"The novel is quite dense and quite hard work. A lot of people have read Wuthering Heights or Pride and Prejudice but I've never met anyone who's actually read it [Notre-Dame de Paris], except my flatmate who borrowed it one time," says Crowder.

Almost nine weeks ago, the company consisting of Crowder, fellow director Vanessa Chapple and producer Michelle Lafferty started rehearsals with their cast: Taungaroa Emile, Shelley Edwards, Stephen Butterworth, Irene Malone, Brett Stewart, Kate Bartlett and Kyle Watson. They had no script. But they knew they wanted to keep the archetypal storytelling and essence of Hugo's novel, while making it relevant for a contemporary audience.

"We were looking for an energy. It's a tragedy, it's emotional but there is comedy and lightness and love. We didn't want to make it so the audience was simply knocked on the head."

The process was organic. They improvised and workshopped ideas. "We try things with the actors and do 20 different ways of doing something, look at them and say, 'Yeah, that's the one that worked'."

Emile, who played Boogie in Once Were Warriors and most recently appeared on stage in Te Maunga, was chosen to play Quasimodo. Crowder was looking for a hunchback who managed to give beauty to the physical ugliness so the audience could empathise with him.

The hunch is coming along nicely and Emile has specially made ugly teeth for the role. This is the third production for Theatre Stampede. Last year's one-woman show Blossom is still touring the country, and the first work The Young Baron also did well.

Things are easier these days for the company.

Where previously they survived on energy and naivety, Creative New Zealand have now stepped in to help financially and Montana are sponsors of the production.

So much so quickly for the young directors who came from the John Bolton Theatre School in Melbourne in November 1988 and bluffed their way into directing A Midsummer Night's Dream for the Outdoor Shakespeare season.

* The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is at the Herald Theatre from this Wednesday to Saturday September 29.