THE LORD OF THE RINGS
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London WC2
Opened 16 June, 2007
**
As soon as I sat down to watch the furry-footed little people
gambolling around the auditorium before the show itself began, I
started sneezing. Either my hay fever had chosen that moment to come
on, or I'm allergic to hobbits. On the basis of the rest of the
evening, the latter cannot be ruled out.
Every few years someone makes a musical of an epic tale that has
gripped millions, and concentrates on the spectacle (and occasionally
the music) at the expense of the actual epic tale that has done the
gripping. Sometimes it works – Les
Misérables, arguably – sometimes not – Notre Dame de Paris, indisputably.
Matthew Warchus and Shaun McKenna's filleting of J.R.R. Tolkien's
1000-page-plus trilogy preserves the spine of the original story: Frodo
and Sam living in rural contentment, ring of power, Rivendell and
elves, Fellowship, Moria, Lothlórien and more elves, Gollum,
Mount Doom, ring destroyed, victory. More than that is difficult to
say. Whole chunks of plot are waved airily aside. How did Gandalf the
wizard escape his imprisonment by his corrupt brother Saruman? "I
escaped." That's all right, then. How is the hobbits' homeland rid of
him at the end of the story? "Saruman has moved on now." Good-oh. After
the great climax, how do Frodo and Sam escape the volcanic Cracks of
Doom? No idea – possibly the One Ring is also a mystical fire
extinguisher. Never mind, on we skim.
Increasingly, the show loses any sense of location, especially when men
and hobbits begin having visions of big power ballads sung in an even
more ill-defined dreamland by elves. (Elves as a race seem big on
gesturing, or possibly on simultaneous Elvish sign-translation. They
are also addicted to aerial work, with flying harnesses, rope spinning,
and a whole new category in addition to Tolkien's High Elves and Wood
Elves: now, meet the Bungee Elves.) The great city of the realms of men
– Minas Tirith to those who know the story, but Warchus and McKenna
have got rid of proper names wherever possible – is represented by a
few model buildings carried aloft on poles. The hobbits' early journey
through the woods around the Shire is dealt with by another team of
pole-wielders in shrouds, who look as if they are punting the forest
along.
Does it work as a musical? Even the question is rather sanguine.
Granted, Tolkien's own lyrics often plonked terribly, but they are known. Warchus and McKenna's
principal task here has been to paraphrase: to retain familiar tones
and phrases without simply reproducing the originals. Inevitably, the
craftsmanship of the copies is inferior. As for Värttinä's
score, even with two makeovers, by A.R. Rahman and now Christopher
Nightingale, it cannot muster a single memorable tune. By and large it
has two modes: unspecifically folky and unspecifically anthemic.
What about as a spectacle? About half of the Theatre Royal auditorium
has been seemingly overgrown with something or other (obscured-view
seats: £50), which with different lighting effects becomes
forest, cavern or... well, usually forest or cavern, actually. Lights
and video back-projection do most of the work, aided by an incessantly
used rising and falling sectional stage revolve. Director Warchus went
to the trouble of circulating a press release beforehand protesting
that the production in fact cost only around half of the rumoured
figure of £25 million; perhaps it should have used the other
half. The wall, singular, of Frodo’s underground home shakes even more
than the Alps beneath Maria’s feet in The
Sound Of Music at the Palladium. The towering horses of the
Black Riders and the colossal spider Shelob are impressive, but as my
friend observed, when the best things in the show are the puppets, all
is not well.
Of the actors, Malcolm Storry is a dignified Gandalf, James Loye and
Peter Howe a serviceable Frodo and Sam, and Michael Therriault an
impressively sinuous Gollum, albeit with an occasional tendency to
strike brief Flashdance
poses. Accomplished actors both of drama (Andrew Jarvis as elf-lord
Elrond) and music theatre (Sévan Stephan as Gimli the dwarf) are
sadly underused; Brian Protheroe has decided to play Saruman as Jose
Ferrer, though his is far from the silliest accent of the evening. It
is easy to find fault, of course, but that is because there are faults enough. Those behind the
production knew that expectations were high, even after the
unenthusiastically received Toronto outing last year which led to
extensive revision and the shaving of some 45 minutes off the running
time (now barely three hours). Those expectations have not been met. In
fact, with undistinguished music, and the puppetry and aerial work, the
closest point of comparison may be the Millennium Dome stage show.
Enough said.
Written for the Financial
Times.
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights
reserved.
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