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

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

An older article from The Star

I have some hope that it might be a case of too many changes too fast. But the comments in the BBC spot are troublesome.

[The Saucepan Man]

Read this review in The Times this morning.

Times Review

The reviewer gives it an impressive four stars and suggests that the dazzling spectacle and magical moments vastly outweigh the few weak points (the performances of Galadriel and Gandalf are noted as the main weak points).

With some fine tuning, this tale could hold its audience in total thrall. For now, its best moments are, like the ring, an intoxicating enchantment.

I was very sceptical about this project when it was first announced, but it is now most certainly on my list of things to see, when it comes to the West End next year.

[davem]

BBC TV news report here - with scenes from the show:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/

Click 'Watch News in Video', go to Entertainment News & its the top report..

[Lalaith]

Is Galadriel the one with the white spiky headdress in the BBC news report? Wasn't too impressed with that...and I *loathe* power-ballads (she sings one, according to the TImes review)...other than that I think it looked rather fun.

I agree that the Front Row reviewer didn't make it sound good. But the Times thing was cheery. I'll go when it comes to London, I think. (And look out for a lawyer puffing away feverishly outside in the interval... )
Any more reviews anywhere?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Lalaith

Is Galadriel the one with the white spiky headdress in the BBC news report? Wasn't too impressed with that...and I *loathe* power-ballads (she sings one, according to the TImes review)...other than that I think it looked rather fun.

I'm with you all the way on power ballads (ugh!), but I thought the Galadriel costume looked good, from what I saw - a change on the usual interpretation of her, and the spikiness conveyed power. Someone had clearly been watching Tilda Swinton as the White Witch . I also spotted what looked like a bald Saruman!

Anyone got any links for sites with the costumes on?

[Bêthberry]

Well, the local review is not nearly as forgiving:

Originally Posted by Kamal Al-Solaylee

Lord of the Rings: Sets shine but this is no jewel
KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE

Globe and Mail Update

The Lord of the Rings

Book and lyrics: by Shaun McKenna and Matthew Warchus

Directed: Matthew Warchus

Starring: Brent Carver, James Loye

At the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto

Rating: **

Who says inflation is under control? Nowadays, a budget of $28-million just doesn't buy you the rollicking stage epic it used to.

The Lord of the Rings — the musical adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy that received its world premiere Thursday night — may boast of its record-breaking cost, but it still looks a lot like unfinished business.

The blueprint for the adaptation — a heroic, if misguided, undertaking billed as a hybrid of drama, music and spectacle — is now in place.

All it needs is an engaging storytelling approach, an emotional arc, credible performances and a more coherent musical score.

In other words, what's missing from this adaptation is the essence of theatre itself as that divine place for sharing stories and forging emotional connections between the audience and the performers.

No man, elf or hobbit can compete with Rob Howell's mammoth set design. A rotating platform is just the beginning to a number of configurations that stand in for forests, mountains, caves and castles, all executed with awesome precision. Howell and director Matthew Warchus solve the problems of bringing to stage such fantastical "characters" as talking trees, dark riders and giant scorpions with exemplary resourcefulness.

This is the point in the review where a polite Canadian critic is obliged, given the scale of the show and Toronto's hopes for it as the bedrock of Ontario's "cultural renaissance," to cast the production as a noble failure. Not so fast. Warchus and his book and lyrics co-writer, Shaun McKenna, have been blessed with source material that has two magic theatrical words written all over it: journey and friendship. They waste both.

The journey is that of Frodo (James Loye), the hobbit entrusted with destroying a ring, forged by the Dark Lord Sauron, that has evil powers to destroy Middle-earth. The friendship is between Frodo and Sam (Peter Howe) as they set out to Mount Doom to throw the ring in its flames. The first leg of their journey is accompanied by the "fellowship of the ring," led by Gandalf the Wizard (Brent Carver). The latter leg is overshadowed by Gollum (Michael Therriault), the ring-obsessed former hobbit.

The details are too convoluted to fully get into here — the playbill comes with a 1,500-word, two-page synopsis — and despite massive cuts, the plot overwhelms McKenna and Warchus.

Their adaptation acquires the irritating drone of a speed-typing contest to see how many storylines can be crammed into three one-hour acts. Few, if any, moments are allowed to breathe onstage or hit their philosophical message.

Part of this show is a musical, so you would think the songs could elucidate what the script failed to accommodate. Not here. The singing interludes merely reiterate information easily gleaned from the synopsis or the stilted, faux-epic dialogue preceding them.

A typical example of the production's muddled thinking about music is a show-stopping (in the literal sense) song in Act 2 by Rebecca Jackson Mendoza as Galadriel. It sounds like any other power ballad in any Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. The rest of the score, by Indian composer A.R. Rahman and Finland's folk group Varttina, plays like someone has raided the world-music section at Indigo, picking up universal sounds and siren songs and hoping for the best.

The score's constant jumps from ethereal to radio-friendly fracture a production already suffering from patent gaps and cuts. You can almost sniff the glue holding it all together.

All of that would have been less troubling if the cast tackled the material with more fervour and elegance. As played by British actors Loye and Howe, Frodo and Sam are a pair of silly, silly hobbits. It's time for them to move from pastoral comic relief to the maturity entailed in accepting the ring's challenge.

It's very hard for the audience to invest emotionally in comic relief, and their journey therefore loses its mythic and physical powers.

Perhaps, one secretly hopes, our Canadian actors will do better. That feeling evaporates a few scenes into Brent Carver's appearance as Gandalf. This otherwise gifted actor is at best wasted and at worst at a loss. His delivery is rushed, lacking both authority and poise.

The other leading (and leaden) cast members are so underwhelming they might as well have been replaced by holograms. An exception is Therriault's free-spirited Gollum, but even he overplays the character's humour at the expense of its dark side.

Once again, the show is the set. Yet the triumphs of visual representation and conceptual design come at an exacting price since they eat up valuable stage time. They also raise expectations that routinely get dashed in the narrative portions. In a hybrid, each part is supposed to pull its weight, not drag the other down.

What elevated Peter Jackson's screen adaptations into solid works of art, as opposed to merely populist entertainment, was his determination to anchor the epic adventures and the special effects in well-defined relationships and strong acting. In cinematic terms, the latter is achieved with a simple close-up.

Theatre can't compete with film in that way. Nor should it. It can, however, beat celluloid to the punch in immediacy, simple stage effectiveness and direct, unfiltered emotional connections. Unless The Lord of the Rings addresses these issues before it transfers to London's West End, it will remain a pale imitation of the books, the films and, tragically, theatre itself.

Here's the link as there may be stage shots rotating. Current picture is for the Leggie fans: piccies

I've seen a picture of the hobbits in Fangorn Forest. Yes, those stilts are the Ents, and the staging looks wonderful. Word from friends who saw a preview concurs with this local review that the acting is weak, although they said the staging is magnificent.

Can it be?

[Bêthberry]

An article yesterday about Michael Therriault, the actor who plays Gollem, has his very interesting take on the character. Gollem, Therriault says, is someone not at home with his soul. Interesting stuff here on his preparation for the role. Most reviews say his performance as Gollem is the standout role.

Here's the article:

Originally Posted by Michael Posner

It's showtime
With the stage premiere of The Lord of the Rings set for tomorrow, MICHAEL POSNER sits down with the show's Gollum, actor Michael Therriault, a Stratford-trained rising star who was born for the theatre
MICHAEL POSNER

A funny thing happened to Michael Therriault on his journey to Middle-earth. When he auditioned for The Lord of the Rings producer Kevin Wallace and his creative team last summer, the Stratford-trained actor had been reading for the part of Frodo or one of the other Hobbits. Then, on the spur of the moment, he also asked to read for Gollum, the deformed wretch who haunts Middle-earth in search of the one ring. According to Therriault, he read two lines and then had to stop. " 'Sorry,' " he told the assembly. " 'That was horrible.' I was so embarrassed."

But something in those two lines clearly registered. During callback auditions for Frodo, director Matthew Warchus asked him to have another go at Gollum. "They asked me to describe Gollum in a sentence," Therriault, 32, said last week in an interview, "and I said he's like someone not at home with his soul." Then they gave him 15 minutes to work up a physical presentation of that idea. By the end of the day, he pretty much had the role.

"His absolute focus and precision of movement meant that you were instantly engaged right from the moment he went into character," says producer Wallace, recalling that audition. "Michael is very courageous, very conscientious and pushes the boundaries. It was self-evident to everyone in the room that he has that extra quality -- a combination of intelligence, imagination, and the vocal and physical abilities to realize his objectives."

On the eve of the world premiere of the most expensive stage production in history -- the $28-million The Lord of the Rings opens tomorrow night at Toronto's Princess of Wales Theatre -- this may sound like a producer's standard hyperbole. But having been fortunate enough to see LOTR's first preview performance, it's clear that if the show has a star -- over and above the sheer spectacle of its production -- it's Gollum.

Moreover, when it comes to Therriault, it's very difficult to find comment that is significantly different.

Thus Richard Monette, the Stratford Festival's long-reigning artistic director: "He's astounding. And so versatile. He can do Henry VI and he can do Ariel [The Tempest] and he can do Andrew Aguecheek [Twelfth Night]. He'll come to rehearsal with a dozen different ways of doing things, readings, stage business. And there's absolutely no ego with Michael."

Thus Stratford veteran William Hutt: "I first saw him as Mordred in Camelot in 1997, and he was electrifying." On the basis of that performance, Hutt later told Monette he wanted Therriault to play Ariel to his Prospero in the 1999 production of The Tempest, and urged him to tackle Oscar Remembered, a one-man show -- directed by Hutt -- about Oscar Wilde.

Thus John N. Smith, who directed Therriault in his first major TV role, as Tommy Douglas in the recent CBC-TV miniseries, Prairie Giant: "The kid is so talented. And a phenomenally hard worker. He was so well prepared. He was watching rushes from the first day."

My own nephew, actor Rami Posner, who spent four seasons with Therriault at the festival, calls him "a triple threat. He can sing, dance and act and do it all well. He's the most human, genuine person I've encountered in the industry. I challenge you to find someone to say a negative word about him. And there is no harder working actor. He lives, eats and breathes theatre."

Because rehearsal time at Stratford was always at a premium, Posner and a few other actors formed what they called the Fight Club, otherwise known as the After Hours Club, returning to the theatre in the evenings to continue working on their roles. "When Michael heard about that, he asked if he could join. But whereas we used to go home and eat something and then come back, Michael would stay and rehearse by himself until we arrived, and then after we left at 10, he'd stay and continue working."

The hard work has clearly paid dividends: Seven seasons at Stratford, in increasingly prominent, skill-stretching roles. His Dora Award-winning performance as Leo Bloom in the Toronto production of The Producers. The plum part as Douglas in Prairie Giant. And a five-month sojourn on Broadway as Mottel the tailor in Fiddler on the Roof, opposite Harvey Fierstein and Andrea Martin.

In preparing for Gollum, Therriault naturally read J. R. R. Tolkien's trilogy, and used descriptions of Gollum to lay down the basic physical construct of the character. But he also -- while appearing on Broadway -- sought out modern-dance performances, went to the Lincoln Center dance library and made a binder of images that conveyed the same emotional impact as Gollum, and later hunted down tapes of the experimental British dance company, DV8.

It's a tired cliché to suggest that someone was born for the theatre, but in Michael Therriault's case, it almost seems true. Growing up in Oakville, Ont., son of working-class parents -- his father drove trucks and later worked on the line at Ford, his mother worked with seniors -- Therriault says he knew he wanted to act and sing as early as elementary school. By Grade 6, he says, he had started phoning around on his own, looking for a dramatic-arts school.

When he discovered the Etobicoke School of the Arts in Toronto, his parents were skeptical: It was an hour and a half away in Toronto and they couldn't afford it. But his grade-school principal was so impressed with the young Therriault, he arranged for the board of education to pay a full scholarship, including tuition and transportation costs. "I think I remember saying to my parents, 'I'm going. I have to go.' They couldn't say no."

Later, his mother encouraged him to go into modelling. " 'Mom,' I said, 'have you seen what models look like?' 'But you're so handsome. You look like Gene Wilder.' 'Mom, Gene Wilder used to scare me as a child.' " On graduation, he enrolled in Sheridan College's performing-arts program and soon won an audition to Stratford. (The only other jobs he's held were as busboy and wait staff at the CN Tower, the Second Cup and the Golden Griddle, from which he was fired after a week.) At his callback audition, he performed Mordred's song -- The Seven Deadly Virtues. "It was okay and they said, 'Thanks, Mike.' " But then [choreographer] Tim French, who had seen me in a summer-stock show stood up and said, 'Wait a second. Michael, I'd like you to do that again and do it this way.' I don't think I'd have gotten the part if he hadn't said give it another try."

In his early years at Stratford, the critics were pretty tough on Therriault. "I stopped reading them," he says. "It was really hard. You know when you're not hitting the mark."

But Monette and Hutt, he says, never lost faith. "If it weren't for them, I don't know if I'd have a career. They just believed in me. When The Miser opened in 1998, I got ripped apart. Richard calls me at home and immediately offers me the part of Ariel for the next season. And he'd say, 'You should do this, it would be a real stretch for you.' " It was Hutt who pushed him, reluctantly at first, to tackle Oscar Remembered. Again, Therriault says, not a critical success, "but for me a giant learning curve and in that respect a huge success."

Therriault says he often felt inferior at Stratford because he had not attended the National Theatre School; at times, he contemplated leaving the festival and going back for more training. "You know, we often box ourselves in as actors and as people. But that's such a dangerous thing to do. You're just not giving yourself enough credit."

Despite his success, Therriault leads a Spartan, almost monastic existence. When he changed apartments once, friends offered to rent a truck and move his furniture. "Unnecessary," he told them. "I don't have any furniture." He bought his first bed when the landed his role in The Producers. He recently rented a furnished condo in midtown Toronto, but concedes that he's been living out of a suitcase for the past couple of years. When he lived in New York doing Mottel, he rented a flat in New Jersey and took the shuttle bus into Manhattan for his eight performances a week.

Therriault says he can't see beyond the end of his 18-month commitment to The Lord of the Rings. The seven-month rehearsal process has been exhausting, and he feels ready for opening night. "Bill Hutt told me once that for actors, it's all just play, and the audience is allowed to peek in if they want. That's very freeing. To think, 'I'm just going to indulge myself like a little kid and not worry too much about whether they like it or not.' I'll try to remember that on opening night."

[Celuien]

Here's one reply to the less-enthusiastic reviewers:

Originally Posted by Philadelphia Inquirer, Tirdad Derakhshani

Sure, hateful cynics, including yours truly, might mock the very idea of plopping Frodo Baggins, Galadriel and Legolas Greenleaf into some poxy musical. And, sure, critics have given the stage version of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings frigid reviews. ("Bored of the Rings," the Toronto Star calls it.) But that don't matter a whit, as long as Tolkien loves the lavish show.

That would be Rachel Tolkien, 35, who Thursday night attended Rings' world premiere in Toronto. At $25 mil, this is billed as the most expensive musical ever. J.R.R.'s granddaughter says the adaptation, by Shaun McKenna and director Matthew Warchus, stays true to the books and is not unduly influenced by Peter Jackson's mega-selling film version.

"The set is incredible, the costumes are beautiful," Tolkien said. "Everything to me that is the most important, and the most moving in the book, they've gotten on the stage."

So, a pox on you critics, and a serious pox on me.