Since 1999 when Der Glockner von Notre Dame debuted to smashing success in Germany, Disney Theatrical fans have clamored for an American musical theater adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Next month, the show makes its debut at La Jolla Playhouse (to be followed by a run at Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey next spring), and the dream of hearing the bells of Notre Dame live on stage will become a reality.
Disney Theatrical veteran Patrick Page, whose credits include Scar in The Lion King, Lumiere in Beauty and the Beast, and The Green Goblin in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, will bring to life the villainous Frollo. After just one week of rehearsals, Patrick sat down for his first interview about the role (and about being a lifelong Disney fan) with D23.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame isn’t your first work with Disney. Were you a fan before you became involved with Disney professionally?
I was kind of obsessed with Disney as a kid. We lived in Oregon and every year I would ask my parents if we could go to Disneyland, because we used to watch The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights, and you would see Disneyland on the show and it was just so magical. I wanted to go and every year I would ask, and every year I think my parents would genuinely try to see if they had the time and the money to take us on a trip there. And so every year I would think we were going to get to go, but it wouldn’t happen for one reason or another. Things were pretty tight in those days.
Finally, one year I said, “OK, if I earn the money, then can we go?” and they said, “Yes,” thinking that there was no way I could do that. But I held a garage sale—and I’m sure I didn’t make enough money to make the trip—but I earned enough to make a difference, and so we finally went and it was completely magical for me in every way. Probably more so, because it was something I had wanted to do, and it had been put off for so long, it seemed like it was going to be impossible and then we finally did it. It was just extraordinary.
Did you have a favorite attraction on that first visit?
You know, I was quite obsessed with the macabre in those days, so I loved Haunted Mansion. It was something that didn’t exist when I was really little, and so it was one of those ones that became a new attraction. You would see Walt Disney on an episode of The Wonderful World of Disney, and he introduced Haunted Mansion. I guess that would have been the one for me.
Some of your most memorable roles have been baddies like Scar, The Green Goblin, and now Frollo, but you were also Lumiere in Beauty and the Beast. Was it fun to get in touch with your lighter side, pardon the pun, in that role?
Yes—my wife loved that role for that reason, because so often I get to play the bad guys, and that’s where we met, on the first national tour of Beauty and the Beast, so she loved that side of me. That’s just such a beautiful role to play because he really is literally and figuratively the light of the production. He’s always bringing energy and light into the scene, so it was really wonderful fun.
You mentioned you met your wife [Paige Davis, former host of TLC’s Trading Spaces] in Beauty and the Beast. Can you tell us about the beginning of that love story?
She was in the ensemble when we began, and it was the very first national tour of the show in 1995. We rehearsed in New York and we opened in Minneapolis, and we started hanging out when we were on the road as friends. We were both coming out of other relationships, so we were friends first, and then we just kept hanging out! We’re still hanging out! It was a very romantic way to meet.
How did you come to be involved with The Hunchback of Notre Dame?
In this particular case, I had done The Lion King and I was also involved in a workshop of Newsies before it had its first performances. So I know all those people and they know me, and I had been with The Lion King off and on for a period of about five years. I think when this came up it was just one of those things that felt right. They called me when they were doing the first in-house readings of it and they asked me if I would come and read, but I wasn’t able to because I was out of town. I felt so devastated. But then finally when they were doing the lab last year, they called and asked again, and I enthusiastically said, “Yes!” It went well, and here we are.
How familiar were you with Disney’s animated film version of Hunchback before you became involved?
I saw it when it came out, and as an actor, of course, you sort of know what you’d like to play, and I immediately felt that with the role of Frollo. First of all, there are so few roles written for a bass-baritone singer, so I immediately felt that it would be something that I would like to do one day, having no idea if ever a show would be made of it.
With the film, as I said, I was very into the gothic and the macabre as a kid and so I was a big fan of the novel and of the movie with Charles Laughton; and so for me the film straddled two worlds. On one hand there are some Disney aspects to it, like the gargoyles that are Quasimodo’s buddies, but on the other hand, it’s quite dark—you have Frollo singing about “Hellfire.” It was a remarkable achievement, and clearly something that wanted to move forward into another medium.
You mention your love of the film’s darkness, and it is certainly darker than previous films that Disney has brought to life on stage. Is there a different creative process with this show than something with more levity?
No, because my job is always the same, which is to try to be as truthful in the situation as I can possibly be. What’s nice about this material is it’s very deep and very rich, like an oil painting where all of the details are filled in. In that way, it’s very rewarding to play.
Fans of your work with Disney Theatrical might not know that you’re also an incredibly accomplished Shakespearean actor. Does that classical training come into play with a character like Frollo, who’s almost Shakespearean in his inner torment and complexity?
It absolutely does. In fact, Shakespeare wrote a character, Angelo, in Measure for Measure, on which I’m quite sure Hugo partially based Frollo. Hugo was a great fan and reader of Shakespeare. Angelo is a man of extreme moral rectitude who finds himself passionately in love with a young girl named Isabella, who’s a novice in a nunnery, and that conflict between the view he has of himself as a righteous, moral man and his instincts tears him and all the people around him apart.
What aspects of the show are you most excited for audiences to see?
I think they will be excited and very moved by how much this has become a stage representation of the novel, with the extraordinary score by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz. It took a step in that direction in Germany, and it’s taken a further step in that direction. I think all movement in that direction is a good thing.
Last question: With Scar, Lumiere, and now Frollo, you’ve brought a trifecta of legendary Disney characters to life on stage. If you could play another Disney character onstage, even one whose story doesn’t have a Broadway adaptation yet, who would it be and why?
Good question. It’s sort of obvious for me, but I think Shere Khan.
