[Mithalwen]

I htink they have made radical changes since Saruman was wearing standard issue wizard robes in London and apart from Elrond being a bit too bling - dripping beads that might have come off the Christmas tree the costumes were good. They cut half and hour and went back to the drawing board.

I went on the opening night so yes the audience were probably mainly hard core Tolkien fans but it got a great response - thought he people we talked to in the interval may have been typical in that he was a big fan and she had bought them tickets as a gift. However both were loving it and we reckoned we had already had our money's worth. While it wasn't a classic musical with perhaps only Lothlorian being the "action stops while character sings" type of number, there were certainly a couple of good song and dance tunes and a few of the melodies I can hum even now after one hearing (just seen the CD on Amazon and thinking about it might invest). The puppet Balrog, Nazgul and Shelob were scarier by far than the CGI and the live Gollum far more effective. I so want to go again and several other Downers who have seen it in London have enjoyed it.

There was a play of the Hobbit about 10 years ago - heard it was quite good but no idea how they handled it other than they cut down on the number of dwarves.