Bit late, but hey. I don't think this article is among the ones posted above.
Quest ends with awe-inspiring live 'Rings'
By MICHAEL KUCHWARA
Associated Press
Toronto - In two shabby warehouses on the edge of the Don River Valley, a determined, some might say foolhardy, band of theatrical adventurers tries to conquer Middle-earth.
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At 185 Eastern Ave., a giant revolve - with 17 lifts - is in place as hobbits and elves scurry up and down the gargantuan steel structure.
Upstairs, a triumphant, majestic melody thunders. A few doors away, at 153 Eastern, the Battle of Mordor rages across a room that could fit a jumbo jet.
Bit by expensive bit, a lavish stage version of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" is coming to life.
If Tolkien's three-part saga about that elusive ring is one of those mammoth, legendary adventures, a quest to end all quests, it has nothing on the task of turning the author's lengthy, meticulously detailed world into a piece of theater.
Yet, here it comes - a three-hour-plus adaptation of Tolkien's trilogy. Now in previews for a March 23 opening at the Princess of Wales Theatre, the show has a cast of nearly 60 actors and costs upward of $23 million - and counting.
By comparison, "The Phantom of the Opera," which cost a record $8 million when it opened on Broadway in 1988, would have a $12 million price tag today.
And the production has some unusual financial backing, including the provincial government of Ontario, which has contributed $2.5 million to the show's budget. And if "The Lord of the Rings" is a success here, London's West End and Broadway will beckon.
Started before Jackson
Like all epic journeys, this one began with the tenacious vision of one man - a quiet, unassuming Irishman from Limerick named Kevin Wallace.
This one-time actor found his way into producing after working for Andrew Lloyd Webber, a man who knows a little something about spectacle himself.
Wallace didn't have the original idea for the stage version of "The Lord of the Rings."
A musical adaptation had been floating around since the late 1990s.
It was this take on Tolkien's novels that first sparked his interest, even before the phenomenal success of Peter Jackson's movie trilogy that was released over a three-year period, starting in 2001.
"We're not putting the films on stage. We're putting the books on stage," Wallace says of Tolkien's three novels that chronicle the adventures of Frodo, Sam, Gollum, Gandalf the wizard, Aragorn, Arwen and more.
That draft was created by book writer and lyricist Shaun McKenna, whose eclectic subjects for other shows have included the celebrated Swiss miss Heidi and French painter Toulouse Lautrec.
Written in the late 1990s, this "Rings" musical adaptation "always was about to happen but never did," McKenna says.
Wallace saw McKenna's version in 2001.
Intrigued but not entirely satisfied, Wallace hired Matthew Warchus, who came aboard not only to direct but to co-author the book and lyrics.
Work began in earnest in 2003 after approval had been granted by Saul Zaentz, who owned the film and stage rights to the property.
Their collaboration radically changed the stage "Rings," and with the change came escalating costs.
"It was clearly going to become very big. You can't do 'The Lord of the Rings' with two sticks and a couple of chairs," McKenna says.
If there is one thing this production is not, it is not a musical, Wallace emphasizes. But the show is filled with music - a score supplied by Bollywood composer A.R. Rahman and a Finnish folk group called Varttina.
At one choral rehearsal, the music sounded vaguely operatic as more that two dozen singers lifted their voices in what was an almost fervent prayer.
"Attempts to make a conventional musical out of 'The Lord of the Rings' could only be done by trivializing the novel," says Warchus. Choreographer Peter Darling, who created the dances for the London hit "Billy Elliott," joined after Warchus urged him to listen to a Varttina recording.
"Much of the dancing is based on musical folk ideas," he says.
Darling didn't work closely with the composers, although he knew certain sequences needed to be danceable.
Rob Howell, who designed the sets and costumes, was presented with a very specific challenge: how to do justice to the book while not aping the look of the film or the books' illustrations.
He knew it was impossible to put everything on stage, but consoled himself knowing "there is an acceptance by the audience that they are going to be invited to play with their imaginations."
The stage will not be empty, though.
While trying not to give away too much of what the show will look like, he calls the design "very organic, an environmental production."
The mammoth turntable set - part of some 40 tons of scenery that took more than a year to build - was constructed in England, put together to be tested, then taken apart and sent by ship to Canada for installation.
5-hour preview
The company showcases some of Canada's best actors, including the ethereal Brent Carver, a Tony winner for "Kiss of the Spider Woman," who plays Gandalf.
At the center, though, is an unknown, James Loye, a chipper 26-year-old from Bristol, England, with masses of dark, curly hair and an engaging manner.
Loye plays Frodo, the Hobbit hero, the bearer of the one ring who is at the center of Tolkien's story.
The curtain went up Feb. 4 at the Princess of Wales Theatre for the first public preview of "The Lord of the Rings."
Some 2,000 theatergoers attended the performance, which lasted nearly five hours - including 50 minutes of intermissions and a 15-minute stop for technical glitches, according to the Globe and Mail.