Some excerpts about Frollo from the complete review:

Claude Frollo is played by Patrick Page: the character is well-written, as complex and tormented as
he is in the novel, but Page uses his talent to make him even more magnetic and captivating, a
character capable of arousing anger as well as compassion.
[…]
I don't think of Frollo as a monster, even though he sometimes behaved ambiguously until now [the
first dialogue with Quasimodo in the bell tower]. He's just human.
[…]
Quasimodo and Frollo's relationship is written so well it makes me cry everytime. Frollo can be
strict, but he also shows a paternal side: when he teaches Quasimodo he is patient, cheerful,
encouraging. Their intimacy is wonderful and it adds another shade of ambiguity to Frollo's
character.
[…]
[About Hellfire] Patrick Page rules the stage with godlike intensity. I personally love the colour
choices – we go from deep blue, to ivory, to blazing red – and I adore Page's movements, the
trembling hands, the closed fists, the arms outstretched like a Christ on the cross, immersed in the
scarlet flare of depravity.

[Note: last year I reviewed Plamondon and Cocciante's Notre-Dame de Paris – which I hate –
and mentioned The Hunchback of Notre Dame in that review, that's why there are some
references to it.]

CONCLUSION

I know I shouldn't be making a comparison between this musical and Plamondon/Cocciante's

Notre-Dame de Paris, but I will make it anyway because I'm a resentful person, you already know
that.
Confronting myself with NDDP fans online something struck me; something that in their opinion
launches NDDP straight in the Olympus of the Musicals: its faithfulness to the source material.
Allow me:

1) Who gives a damn

2) Faithfulness to the events of the source material is not a synonym of quality
3) Faithfulness to the events of the source material does not correspond to the understanding,
filtration and re-delivering of its message
4) Who gives a damn

Seriously, let's talk about it for a second. Faithfulness? Yeah, right. What was Hugo's message? Why
did he write Notre-Dame de Paris? Did he want to narrate the love “square” between a gypsy girl
and three horny men? No. Did he want to give Cocciante and Plamondon some wonderful raw
material for them to slaughter it to make money and outmoded music? NO.

The answer: to bring to the public's attention the importance of architecture, of the Gothic style in
particular. Thanks to the enormous influence the book had on the people, in 1845 the Cathedral
underwent a substantial renovation by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.
Hugo, who had fallen in love with the masterpiece that is the Cathedral of Notre-Dame – at the
time, abandoned with no tutelage by the government – wanted for the rest of the people to fall in
love too, so that they could open their eyes and understand the need of protecting an art form which
– he was sure – was going to disappear with the arrival of the printing press and thus of the writing,
an art often subjected to a censorship that couldn't touch architecture however.

For some moments the Archdeacon contemplated the gigantic edifice in silence; then, sighing
deeply, he pointed with his right hand to the printed book lying open on his table, and with his left
to Notre-Dame, and casting a mournful glance from the book to the church:
“Alas!” he said. “This will destroy that.”

[…]

In those days, he who was born a poet became an architect. All the genius scattered among the
masses and crushed down on every side under feudalism, as under a testudo of brazen bucklers,
finding no outlet but in architecture, escaped by way of that art, and its epics found voice in
cathedrals.

Notre-Dame de Paris was written to tell us one thing and one thing only: it doesn't matter if we're
beautiful, ugly, smart, stupid, cunning, naïve, depraved, pure. Nothing of us will be left. What
matters is architecture, that shapes and is shaped by the lives and ideas of those who orbit in her
spaces. Buildings live on, above the flaws and imperfections of human life; they are what's left of
the past, what's going to shape the future. They are but our inheritance: we receive it, and we give it
to those who will come after us.
As Hugo wrote in his pamphlet “War on the Demolishers”, in 1832:

A building has two things: its use and its beauty. Its use belongs to its owner, its beauty to
everyone; to destroy it is to overstep one’s rights.

So ok, there are some hints of social critique in Notre-Dame de Paris, but they're not the main focus
of the book nor they have to be. Hugo wrote it for a purpose and he was successful. Chapeau.

Let's talk about the Disney version: we all know it's a bit different from the book. Frollo is a judge,
Esmeralda is a determined young woman and not a naïve girl, Phoebus is a good person, happy
ending. But Disney didn't come up with this ideas out of the blue. All of these changes derive from
an older adaptation of the book: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, by William Dieterle (1939). From
this adaptation Disney got the inspiration for some of the most famous scenes in the animated
movie: Quasimodo who limps back to the Cathedral after his humiliation; Phoebus who rallies the
Parisians (in the '39 version it was Gringoire who did it); Esmeralda's prayer in God Help the
Outcasts. The musical draws from this movie too: the dialogue between Esmeralda and Frollo in the
Cathedral; Quasimodo ringing the bells for Esmeralda; Quasimodo asking a gargoyle “Why was I
not made of stone like thee?”.
The happy ending of all the above adaptations was written even earlier, in the grand opera in four
acts La Esmeralda, composed by Louise Bertin on a libretto written by Hugo.
So the first to play around with Notre-Dame de Paris was the author himself.
What is my point, then? At the risk of repeating myself: who gives a damn about faithfulness.

Mind you: the animated movie is not flawless (oh dear god those damned gargoyles. Why couldn't
they be just figments of Quasimodo's mind?), but there is one thing that Dieterle and Disney
understood: what can be effective in a book might not work on the stage, and vice versa.
A concept that Plamondon and Cocciante did not understand, when they wrote NDDP. Hugo's book
was written to save architecture. It's a message does not concern us as it did in 1831. A new
message is needed, to make it work in a play. Change is needed.
So NDDP is indeed faithful, but still it lack the social message – hinted at by Hugo, attempted by
Dieterle, and fully developed by Disney – that makes all the other adaptations available to the
audiences.
But where NDDP lazily tries and fails, THOND succeeds.

Religion:
THOND is rife with religion: the dialogues, the lyrics, the characters, the locations; we can find
religious references everywhere. Esmeralda is called a “heathen” but still she represents the values
taught by Christ, the same values that Phoebus will adopt; Quasimodo fed on religion for twenty
years, he holds angels and saints up as role models and everything he does is always suitable to do
good, to show to himself and to the world that even a “monster” like him is worthy of Heaven.
Frollo, well... he speaks for himself.

Aesthetic:
I just love how they use the stage. The bells are so huge, the wooden framework is beautiful, the
choir is powerful but not distracting. The scenography are simple and imaginative: the actors
themselves build it while the story unfolds. Every location is different and the lights are skilfully
used. The Cathedral is my personal favourite, I just love how rich and intimate it looks.
I also love how the cast uses hats, waistcoats, aprons and other pieces of clothing to transform in
different characters onstage: almost all of the fixed pieces have neutral colours, while the
interchangeable ones have bright colours and shimmering fabrics. This trick – along with the talent
of the actors themselves – reinforces the theatrical illusion while allowing the actors to do as they
please, for the narrative pact is not infringed.

Messages:
THOND deals with a lot of themes: deformity, lust, faith, sex, justice... and it does so with violence
and grace, and above all with honesty.
Frollo is ambiguous, victim and executioner at the same time; faith is depicted as a source of hope
for the helpless, but through Frollo's desperation faith becomes twisted and corrupted.
A comment of Patrick Page about his character:

“I think of him more in terms of someone like any of us who gets involved with things and then lies
to himself and doesn't tell himself the truth. But he really tells himself the entire time that he's doing
it for the good of the city, for the good of Esmeralda's soul, for the good of his own soul.
[…]
I think he's in the grasp of powers much much greater than himself and is very, very confused by it,
and it causes him to do violent things. I think it's worth saying that a lot of violence in the world
today is fuelled by that — by both religious ideology that's fuelling Frollo and by sexual
repression.”

However I think it's possible to sympathize with Frollo in this musical (and in the book) for his
experience is extremely human. Page himself explains how his own personal experience with
depression influenced his performance and his relation with this character:

“My particular illness sometimes has aspects of mania, and it goes both very high and very low.
And that kind of spinning toward something, trying to make something happen, trying to make
something happen, trying to make something happen... and the unrealistic nature of that belief is
something that a lot of characters in a lot of plays have. They want something very, very, very badly
and nothing is going to get in their way. And at some point, if they don't get it, they crash.
I think the more things that happen to you in life, they're just going to add to your work. Whether
they're illness, whether they're obstacles you've faced, addiction, deaths of people you love — all
those things are going to affect you. It's hard for me to say exactly how but it definitely does, is a
component of virtually every part of my life. It's just how I am.”

While Frollo becomes twisted in a moral sense, Quasimodo is born deformed and yet he acts with
rectitude; they both grew up under Notre-Dame's wing, but they end up representing two sides of
the same faith.

Lust and love:

Not only are we given the representation of two extremes – Frollo's will of possession of
Esmeralda, and Quasimodo's idealization of her (very similar to the Dolce Stil Novo's conception of
the woman as an angel) – but we're also given the middle ground with Phoebus; a relationship here
much more developed than in the animated movie. It's not a I-met-you-yesterday-will-you-marry-
me love, but rather the desire to engage in a path of mutual understanding and personal growth. It's
a relationship based upon respect and equality, something we still rarely see in the show business in
general. It's a positive message and a much needed one too, considering the sexism in our “modern”
society.
Inheritance:
I think there is a message that stands out, and it's not just “ugly does not mean evil”. Disney already
taught that in the animated movie and it did it well, but THOND as a musical goes even further than
that: whatever happens, we have to move on, however painful it may be. This is our only life,
world, and home. Whether there is a Heaven or not, we live in the here and now.
Today, we have two hands and this is enough to clean some of the mud: let's dream our dreams, let's
do what we can with what we have, without sparing a single blow against those who try to keep our
heads down because of the colour of our skin, or because of our religion, our sex, our love.
Tomorrow, when a sweeter morning will come, it will be thanks to us, thanks to every unsold inch
of ourselves.
For this is our inheritance: our Notre-Dame.