Producers are hunting for an undiscovered singing talent for the role of a lifetime to star as the infamous and tragic Parisian hunchback Quasimodo in the last great unproduced musical by Oliver! composer Lionel Bart. Quasimodo is getting its World Premiere in a major coup at the King’s Head Theatre in London - 50 years after it was written.
“We need a young man who has the vulnerability of Charles Laughton and the animal magnetism of a young Tom Hardy, but who can also sing like Tom Jones,” says director Robert Chevara. “Quasimodo is the most complex character in Lionel Bart's most ambitious score. Like The Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera, Quasimodo is an iconic role. He is like a young bull and the part is incredibly physically and emotionally demanding. He must be able to embody the isolation of the total outsider, with whom Lionel Bart identified and have the duality of both ferocious power but also a child-like inner joy. His scenes with Esmeralda fizz with sexuality and electricity and as in Beauty and the Beast, the audience should question their prejudice of what being ugly, or beautiful, really means.”
Would-be Quasimodos should have a playing age of 18 - 25 with a strong tenor voice, good physique, yet vulnerable.
Open auditions will be held at the King’s Head Theatre, 115 Upper Street. London N1 from 10.00am on Tuesday 15th January. Just turn up on the day! Any questions about the role or the production can be sent to casting@kingsheadtheatre.com
Lionel Bart wrote the words and music for Quasimodo, based on Victor Hugo's 1831 novel Notre Dame de Paris, in 1963. It was hoped that the poignant tale, set in 15th-century Paris, of the love between the deformed bellringer and the beautiful gypsy girl Esmerelda would make it to the West End and Broadway, where it would have joined the list of Bart's stage hits: Lock Up Your Daughters, Fings Ain't Wot They Used t'Be, Oliver!, Blitz! and Maggie May. But it was never produced in his lifetime. He died 13 years ago in 1999 in London.
A semi-staged workshop for investors and producers in 1995 at the Soho Laundry, featuring Tony Award-winning Frances Rufelle as Esmerelda, Ray Shell (currently playing the manager in The Bodyguard) as Quasimodo and Peter Straker, was the nearest it came to the West End. A recording of that workshop still exists with Lionel himself playing the piano as part of the band.
Bart said at the time of the workshop: “I've been fascinated by this story since I saw Charles Laughton as the hunchback in the 1939 film version. I was inspired by the story of this marvellous soul within a monstrous body. But in the original story the hunchback is only 18 - not Charles Laughton at all. Esmerelda is 16, a street kid. With the obsession of the priest, Frollo, who is the hunchback's mentor, it suddenly came together as an involved, modern, dark subject. The simple premise of the piece, when I wrote it, was the question, 'What is ugly?' I hoped that you could realise, when you left the theatre, that the guy at the end of the row wasn't so ugly after all. It's a tragic story, but about being free to change, free to renew oneself. In a way I became the hunchback. It's a great release and a catharsis for me to put it all in this work.”
Director Robert Chevara scored a major success in 2012 with the first London production of Tennessee Williams’ Vieux Carré since its West End premiere in the 1970s. His production won rave reviews, sold out the King’s Head Theatre and transferred to the West End to Charing Cross Theatre.
Visit www.kingsheadtheatre.com for more information about the production and to book tickets.
No comments:
Post a Comment