Fireside Singers set to take on The Hunchback

It’s a well-known musical tale, but don’t expect the Fireside Singers’ performance of The Hunchback of Notre Dame to be just like the Disney movie.

Choir director Marilyn Whitehead said although people will recognize the setting and the characters from the Victor Hugo novel made more famous by the animated movie musical, there’s more depth to the show than the audience might expect.

“It goes through darker places,” Whitehead said. “This is a story about humanity.”

The show will be the 12th fulllength musical staged by the Fireside Singers, according to Whitehead. She said some members of the group went down to San Antonio, Texas, to watch a production of the show there. They decided to purchase the set from that production to use in Saskatoon.

However, that set was for a production of the show featuring

around 35 people. Whitehead said the Fireside Singers have an ensemble closer to 100.

“We had to make room for all of those people onstage ... so I think that in itself made it quite grand,” she said with a chuckle.

It’s incredibly difficult to get a chorus of that size on any stage for a show. Whitehead said one of the biggest challenges in putting this show together was teaching the large chorus so many songs in Latin — a language out of the ordinary for the Fireside Singers’ normal repertoire.

The best part of the show for her was being able to have so much of the group involved on the stage, she said.

“It just became kind of a perfect show for Fireside because the chorus gets to be onstage and singing so much of the show.”

The Fireside Singers’ production of the Hunchback of Notre Dame runs on May 30 and 31, 7:30 p.m., at TCU Place. Tickets available at tcutickets.ca.