Lord of the Rings: The Musical (No Joke!)

[Himilsillion]

That trailer looks great. I think this will be a very good production of LoTR. Plus anything put into music well is great.

[Laitoste]

I've spent some time (NOT working on my papers, like I ought to be) exploring the official website and it looks to be interesting, to say the least! My standards are different for theater than for movies, however. There won't be time to make frivolous additions, just major cuts. But, in a staged performance, just the main plot and the spirit of the book are necessary, which is what I'll be looking for. In that aspect, I have a lot of hope for this musical! If only I could feasibly get to Toronto...

[Laitoste]

Now that I've identified what I want to say...

The theater should be an experience, more so than the cinema. Going to a show should draw me directly into the world it is trying to portray. This is the major reason why the filmed Phantom of the Opera will never be as good as the staged show (that and the fact that they took out the flaming skulls--who takes out FLAMING SKULLS?). The movie just doesn't have as much capability to draw me into the world, to make me feel as if I myself am in danger when the chandelier comes crashing down. The Lord of the Rings musical doesn't need to be painstakingly faithful to the book. There isn't time. However, it has to feel like Middle-Earth. Otherwise, it won't work.

[Tigerlily Gamgee]

Agreed. For many of the film musicals lately (Phantom, Rent)... the film just doesn't do it for me. There is something about going to a theatrical production. I almost always get teary eyed when I walk into the theatre and see the world on stage. I'm hoping the LOTR will be the same for me.
In other news... if anyone is going to The Gathering and needs a room... I'm looking for roommates... PM me :-)

[suncrafter]

To be honest, I balked when I read "Lord of the Rings The Musical". But then I was reminded of when I first heard that disiney was doing "Hunchback of Notre Dame". I balked then too. But It turned out to be a great film! If you think about it - LOTR would lend its self well to an opra-like musical. I say give it a chance.

[Bêthberry]

Well, the stage production does not open for some time yet, but the early previews have been moved back to this Saturday from this Thursday. Here's a local news story about the latest hype. The local paper has a great picture of the RingWraiths, which isn't available online, sadly--it's a bit neat to see how they are being depicted.

Originally Posted by Michael Postner

Tuesday, January 31, 2006 Posted at 3:28 AM EST

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

According to the calendar, opening night for the most ambitious theatre project in history -- the $27-million production of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings -- is still seven weeks away.

But for the show's producers, cast and creative team, the March 23 world premiere at Toronto's Princess of Wales Theatre is only a distant focus of attention.

The date that looms much larger in significance is actually much closer: on Saturday -- the night of the first preview, the first public performance of the three-hour-and-30-minute (with two intermissions) adaptation.

By the sheer cost, scope and audacity of the production -- its unprecedented budget, its epic scale -- producers Kevin Wallace, David Mirvish and Michael Cohl will enshrine their names in the history of commercial theatre, win or lose.

Advertisements

But the reaction of the audience to Saturday's show -- and to 42 other previews scheduled before opening night -- will go a long way toward determining whether the historic citation comes with accolades or demerits.

"I'm really curious to see first the 10 days of previews, and the chemistry of the stage and the audience," says Wallace. "Do they embrace the story and the actors and all the special effects? I want to see how they respond to the totality. If it doesn't work, we will tweak and fine-tune and address moments of weakness. If anything, that's the area we will be in."

Insiders say the preview period, while not decisive, will be a critical indicator of whether the show is a major hit, a middling curiosity or an outright flop. But the early buzz from those few who have penetrated the security cordon set up around rehearsals is positive.

Major theatre names from London and New York have been phoning for tickets. The advance sale has now eclipsed $15-million.

In many ways, the stakes appended to The Lord of the Rings could not be higher.

Financially, dozens of investors and backers, including the province of Ontario and Tourism Toronto, have rolled the dice, with wagers ranging from $10,000 to millions.

Professionally, Wallace and his entire creative team -- director and co-writer Matthew Warchus, co-writer Shaun McKenna, choreographer Peter Darling, designer Rob Howell and composers A. R. Rahman and the Finnish folk ensemble Varttina -- have committed at least two years of their lives and laid their reputations on the line.

For the city of Toronto, battling to regain its status as a major theatre mecca, The Lord of the Rings holds enormous promise. If it succeeds, it will finally erase the stigma left by SARS and the collapse of Garth Drabinsky's Livent empire, and inject millions of dollars in tourism revenues. If it fails, it may be a long time before outside producers decide to build a new show here.

LOTR is a gamble, too, for David Mirvish, the country's leading theatrical producer. He has $1-million of his own money invested and another million through Mirvish Productions. Beyond that, the impresario is testing his "credibility and judgment and what I've chosen to bring" to the marketplace.

It was one thing, he noted in an interview, to persuade the producers of Mamma Mia! to mount a Toronto production of their hit show before taking it to Broadway. "Now," Mirvish said, "we're raising the bar. So what's at stake is changing people's thoughts about where theatre can originate. Usually, it's only done in London or New York. Other cities have tried, but no one has succeeded at what were trying to do. Nothing of this magnitude, certainly. So this could change the equation of how we think about the city and ourselves and what we can do."

As for the creative team, Mirvish says they've been given "an enormous trust" by the Tolkien estate to do justice to the work. Vast resources have been put behind them, "in the belief they will do something extra. It will change all of their lives if they succeed, and they know it. Personally, Kevin Wallace has bet the house on this show. It's everything, his whole life. He has no other interests."

Wallace denies it. He's still as crazy about soccer as he was as a kid growing up in Limerick, Ireland. But "yes," he says, "I have absolutely everything tied up in this and I'm proud of it. I had to put everything in to keep it going because otherwise it would have gone down and I did not want to play safe. We're all sticking our necks out. We want the eyes of the world on us. And we will be remembered as the people who brought Lord of the Rings to the stage, and be judged by audiences and critics accordingly."

And if it fails? Wallace refuses to entertain the idea. "Out of superstition, we just don't go there. Going into battle, you do not entertain defeat. Everything is marshalled for success. You are expecting to be victorious."

But other observers say the stakes may not be as high as they appear. "I actually think it is such a difficult thing to pull off that a failure would not reflect badly on anyone," says Dory Vanderhoof, a Toronto-based cultural consultant. "At worst it will be called a noble effort, a noble failure."

Nor, maintains Vanderhoof, is there any appreciable downside for the city. "If it fails, it won't be Toronto's fault. This is a great theatrical market. It has great audiences and the community has really gotten behind this show."

The Ontario government, others note, has probably already made back in income and sales taxes the $3-million it lent to the production. At a minimum, even if the Princess of Wales is only 70 per cent occupied, the show will run for a year, and generate millions in hotel, restaurant and cab revenues.

And if it works, The Lord of the Rings, may revolutionize the art of stagecraft. "On the Twentieth Century was not great theatre," Vanderhoof says, "but technically it was the most amazing show anyone had ever seen. It changed the way we look at musicals. This show may do that."

Of its $27-million capital cost, about $20-million comes from Canada, the rest from Britain. In a best-case scenario, insiders say, the show could recoup its original investment within 37 weeks. More likely, it will take a year or slightly more. Running costs are expected to run about $1-million a week.

Last week, both Mirvish and Wallace made presentations at a dinner meeting of the Toronto Board of Trade. "I talked about why we came here and not New York," Wallace says, "to remind them of the level of excellence that exists here, but you don't see because it's under your nose. The talent is here. You need to celebrate it."

Mirvish lauded the recent wave of cultural spending on museums, art galleries and opera houses, but noted that the buildings mean nothing until there's something inside them. "Soon, we will have to turn our minds to content."

Mirvish says he is cautiously optimistic that The Lord of the Rings provides the kind of content to which audiences will respond. "I don't want to create too great an expectation. I want people to have their own experience. But it all comes down to the show. For all the toys and special effects, we're still depending on a group of people in their late teens and 20s to whom we've effectively entrusted millions of dollars."

[Bêthberry]

Okay, I found the picture of the actors preparing their RingWraith roles, so here it is. Rumour has it they will be walking down the ailes amongst the audience before taking to the stage.

[Bêthberry]

Here's Michael Posner's article on the preview performance from last Saturday. Article from The Globe and Mail, Monday February 6,2006.

Perhaps the actors in stilts in the picture I posted previously are the Ents. Some time ago, rumours had it that the Black Riders would ride down through the audience towards the stage on some kind of stilt contraption. Who knows what wonders of stage machinery await viewers! And who knows what Tolkien would have made of that kind of machinery.

Originally Posted by Michael Posner

THE LORD OF THE RINGS THEY LIKE IT, THEY REALLY LIKE IT
MICHAEL POSNER

The critics' reviews are still several weeks away, but for the 2,000 people who constituted the first public audience of the most ambitious theatrical project in history, the verdict Saturday night was a decisive thumbs up.

No matter that the first preview performance of Lord of the Rings -- at Toronto's Princess of Wales Theatre -- suffered a couple of technical glitches that forced the show to stop for 15 minutes or so. And no matter that, when the curtain finally fell on the $27-million musical adaptation of the classic Tolkien novels, nearly five hours (including 50 minutes worth of intermission, accompanied by drinks and snacks on the house) had elapsed.

Although there were a handful of walkouts when the clock neared 11 p.m., interviews with audience members conducted before, during and after the show -- the Globe and Mail was the only media organization invited to actually watch the show -- suggest that this epic production will go a long way toward satisfying the enormous appetite for the inhabitants of Middle Earth.

"It's a thing of great beauty," said entertainment lawyer Brian Wynn, after the show ended with a standing ovation. "But the world needs to know what the concept is. It's not a musical. It's not a Stratford production. It's somewhere in between. If you come expecting a new Les Miz or Oklahoma -- it's not. But I think they've pulled out the poetry and the themes better than the movies."

"Very good," said Toronto teenager Andrew Buchanan who came with his father and brother. "The length didn't bother me at all. I want to see it again."

"It will be brilliant," said one woman who requested anonymity. "They have work to do, but I think it will be our next Phantom [of the Opera]," the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that ran for 10 years in Toronto. Although the Globe agreed not to review this first preview, it's fair to say that the world created by director Warchus and his creative team is unlike anything anyone has ever seen in conventional commercial theatre before.

The gnarled forests of Middle Earth thrust out to embrace the audience. The automated, cantilevered stage turns, twists, rises, falls and tilts in myriad and extraordinary ways -- at one moment, a winding forest path, the next, a soaring battlefield promontory, while wind and smoke swirl through the auditorium. Menacing orcs leap and tumble like pre-historic Raptors.

A dozen Ents --14-feet-high humanoid trees (actors on stilts) -- conduct a council of the forest.

Frodo and his fellow Hobbits run in fear of the ominous Black Riders. Michael Therriault is Gollum made animate, a writhing, wheezing, gymnastic incarnation of creepiness. The music -- jointly composed by the Finnish folk ensemble Varttina and India's A.R. Rahman -- owes more to opera than musical theatre, an almost continuous score that includes lush ballads, a rollicking drinking number (at the Prancing Pony Inn), a powerful anthem song, as well as the stirring, discordant strains of the battlefield.

Indeed, the show's sets, lighting (designed by Paul Pyant) and special effects (by Graham Meeh and Paul Kieve) were mentioned by many theatregoers as the single most stunning aspect of the production.

New York financier John Halle, who flew up for the preview, said the central question for him was whether audiences would tolerate a show that even at its optimum is scheduled to run three hours and 30 minutes with intermissions. Halle apparently couldn't; he left toward the end of Act II.

"Awesome," said Bruce Lovitz, an emergency room physician from South Carolina who flew up with his eight-year-old son, Carl, for the show. Calling himself "almost the world's biggest fan" of the novels -- he's read each of them every other year for 30 years. "It absolutely meets my expectation. I like the originality of the songs. My concern was that they would borrow too much from the movie versions, but they use just enough. . . . The books are so global -- they encompass the entire human experience, different facets of the human personality. It's a wonderful escape for us on this earth to escape to Middle Earth."

In his pre-curtain remarks to the audience Matthew Warchus explained that this was his second delivery in four weeks. A month ago, his wife had given birth to a Canadian son. "Births can be scary, unpredictable, painful and messy," Warchus said, "but there's nothing like being there at the beginning."

[Bêthberry]

This just in, posted on the Toronto Star website:

Lord of the Rings musical to close September 3rd and reopen in London next May

There go plans to see it in late September with some Downers. I suppose I can hustle and get summer tickets though. Sort of like, I walked the decks of the Titanic before it sailed.

[Lalwendë]

I understand that The Dominion is the only suitable theatre for this in London, so it must mean that We Will Rock You is moving on. I wonder if the truth is that they've just been waiting for this to happen?

[Bêthberry]

Well, it came to Toronto with strong government and business support only after the suitable London theatres were not available, although now Toronto looks a bit like an entire preview run. It is a huge production. The Princess of Wales theatre has something over 35 stage elevators just to handle the sets.

It is sad for the theatre and arts community here. It would have been great for local actors, dancers, everyone in theatre here, had the show been successful. I suppose I'll be seeing Wicked this fall now instead. And then there's an incredible production of The Magic Flute, presented in baroque style dance and staging... oh, sorry, off topic...

I did see a fabulous Hobbit here at a children's theatre, but that wasn't a musical.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

What horrible timing! I wanted to see it in mid-September; couldn't they wait just two weeks?! Oh well, London's not far, so if I can get bargain flight prices, I'll go see it there...

[Bêthberry]

According to today's news stories in The Globe and Mail, Lal, the mega-not-quite-a-musical is moving to the "Theatre Royal Drury Lane" according to the front page story by Kate Taylor, former theatre critic.

Here's a post mortem by the Globe's theatre critic, who of course was one of the initial nay-sayers and so who is going to defend his position after yesterday's complaints that once again the local critics were harsher than the Brit crits. (Actually, this is a recurrent thread in Canadian cultural life, that local always gets a harsher view than imports. Colonial insecurities still.)

Originally Posted by Kamal Al-Solaylee

The Lord of the Rings CANCELLED
As the panned Toronto production breathes its last gasp, KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE analyzes what went wrong, and if prospects might change across the Atlantic
KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE

For the last few weeks, the question that most theatregoers in Toronto were asking was not if The Lord of the Rings would close, but when. We now at least have an answer: Sept. 3.

Now, let the real questions begin. Why did it close so early after all the excitement that greeted news of its arrival? What failed in its marketing as the guiding light of Toronto's cultural renaissance? How will it fare in London, its "spiritual home," to use producer Kevin Wallace's words, when it opens next June at the Drury Lane Theatre?

Did the Toronto critics, as Wallace suggested in one of his mixed messages at yesterday's press conference, really kill the show's momentum and, if so, is their non-British theatrical sensibility the reason they (and most other North American reviewers) didn't "get" it? The British critics who flew to Toronto for the March 23 opening, Wallace continued, loved it -- a statement that conveniently ignored one of the most acerbic reviews The Lord of the Rings received at the hands of the very British Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph.

While there are many questions and almost as many people to blame (at least in Wallace's mind), the real explanation for the show's demise is simple: It failed to connect with audiences on a deeper level than the visual. Despite some innovative stagecraft, The Lord of the Rings, in the version critics saw at least, was a hollow, lifeless affair with no real emotional pull to the storytelling, the music or the acting. The story itself proved confusing to anybody not familiar with J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy of books. Not even the lengthy synopsis in the program was of much help.

Too much time and energy have gone to the logistics of the adaptation and not nearly enough on its emotional life.

Although Wallace insisted that his market research indicated that nine out of 10 audience members would recommend The Lord of the Rings to their friends, effectively bypassing critical opinion, he and the rest of the producers failed to translate that into a critic-proof phenomenon. Most audience members were literally not buying it. On Broadway as in the West End, many, many musicals (The Phantom of the Opera comes to mind) survive critical drubbings and evolve not just into success stories but social phenomena.

I also believe the marketing of the show was muddled and of no help to audiences who were tempted but needed that final push to get them to part with up to $125 a ticket. From the show's logo to its embarrassing advertising campaigns -- remember the "Reach for the Ringtone (My Precious)" posters on the subway? -- the advertising always suggested a production that's still experimenting with its identity and how to project that identity to the world.

Ultimately, the Toronto production was the very expensive out-of-town tryout for The Lord of the Rings. Tryouts are all about trial and error. In taking the show to London, Wallace will probably also take some valuable lessons on how not to produce megamusicals in the future. (Lesson one: Call it a megamusical.)

I suspect the London run will fare significantly better, partly because the British may look more favourably on a work created by their own, but mainly because the production itself will likely evolve and improve before it opens there or pitches other tents in Europe. We wish it well, but we also have to acknowledge that, despite all talk to the contrary, little Toronto was just a stand-in for big London.

Gee, isn't that last bit what I said yesterday? And they don't pay me what they pay this guy!

EDIT: the theatres

Drury Lane

Princess of Wales theatre