Alain Lortie

It may be a bit unfair, but there’s no escaping comparing "Notre Dame De Paris," currently exploding on the stage of the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, with its immensely popular French-literature-inspired brethren "Les Misérables" and "Phantom of the Opera." All three are audience-pleasing spectacles with lusty, manipulative scores that hit the audience right between the eyes.  The major difference involves how their stories are told.  The latter two are constructed as bigger-than-life plots driven by bigger-than-life songs. "Notre Dame," on the other hand, is a series of very French pop songs that are the plot, storytelling not particularly effective due to their being sung in French, albeit with good translations flashed on several screens. There is very little non-sung dialogue.  All the songs were brazenly amplified to rock concert level so that their ubiquitous crescendos and climaxes could be savored. [more]