Word: hunchback
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Andy Borowitz '80, author-director of Gars and Goyles, is treading near the edge of the Inferno with his creation. A loose musical adaptation of Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the fall production of the Radcliffe Grant-in-Aid Society suffers the fate of many similar musicals that break from the gate with fast scores, only to get bogged down in the backstretch with a muddy script. Borowitz's music and lyrics are undoubtedly first-rate, but his book is simply ridden with too many stale jokes to carry the action. As the playwright's first effort...
...plot is par for the musical comedy course: Girl meets hunchback, hunchback falls in love, girl resists seduction by various poets and archdeacons, girl and hunchback meet in the bell-tower to live happily ever after. In between there are enough subplots and romantic interludes to keep the audience pleasantly amused, waiting for the bad guys and good guys to have it out in the final scene. So far so good. But Borowitz's manic idea somehow falters on the way to the cathedral, as the characters find themselves spouting an assortment of intolerable puns, weak jokes about SAT scores...
LUCKILY, THOUGH, the songs are worth fidgeting for. Cleverly conceived and well-orchestrated, Borowitz's score definitely has a professional tone. From the opening to the finale, where the cast advises the love-lorn hunchback Quasimodo to "Get That Chip Off Your Shoulder," the score captures the tone of lunacy notably missing in the book, and infuses it with a bouncy, foot-tapping rhythm. Somehow, with an orchestra in the background, even the worst puns seem downright clever (even the heroine's tuneful realization of her love for Quasimodo--"Something 'Bout That Man That Rings a Bell"--is forgiveable...
...cast reflects the weaknesses of the play. George Hunt, as the socially underdeveloped hunchback, turns in a strong performance but seems to be searching for the good lines he obviously deserves. He never finds them, and can only try to make up for the lack of laughs by relying on tiresome sight gags. As Esmerelda, the gypsy beauty, Heitzi Epstein is only fair: Her voice is good, but she lacks the force to capture the audience when the orchestra stops. Dave Studenmeund, as the lecherous but cowardly Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers and Maury Levin, as the lecherous but frustrated poet...
...think Gars and Goyles, the Radcliffe Grant-in-Aide show opening tonight, is just a mispronunciation of the title of a story you've heard some place before, then you're only partly wrong. Writer-director Andy Borowitz '79 says that his new musical comedy is based on "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." But it's also, Borowitz claims, "a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical except the leading man doesn't have good posture." "America has been begging for a good family musical about a hunchback for a long time," Borowitz says (only partly joking). With its big, brassy production...