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

[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."

[Tigerlily Gamgee]

Oh, I've seen the stilt contraptions the Black Riders use... they are friggin' sweet!

[davem]

Feature from today's Times On-Line:http://entertainment.timesonline.co....073645,00.html

[davem]

Reviewed on BBC Radio Four's 'Front Row'. Doesn't sound too promising

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/frontrow/index.shtml

In order to hear it click on the 'Listen Live' link (top right) not the 'listen to latest program', as that is still bringing up yesterdays (that should change later tonight or tomorrow). The Listen Live option should bring up the radio player, go down to the Front Row program in the list & click Thursday's program.

If this reviewer is right I'm wondering if its going to make it.....

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Here are some photos from the musical production: Playbill news

[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.

[Mithalwen]

I bet she didn't say gotten... but with that endorsement I may try top scrape together enough pennies for a trip to the west end...

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

I'm scaping already... for Toronto.

[Celuien]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

I bet she didn't say gotten... but with that endorsement I may try top scrape together enough pennies for a trip to the west end...

Newspaper writers do have a way of misquoting people.

But yes, I was very, very skeptical of the idea that a musical would work. Now I might see it if the show comes close enough to Philly.

[Lalaith]

Here in the UK, the Guardian and the Observer, as well as the Times review quoted earlier, quite liked it. The Telegraph did not.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.../btrings24.xml

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/reviews/o...739487,00.html

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/reviews/s...739173,00.html

Hmmm...I quite rate the opinions of Charles Spencer (the Telegraph bloke) so now I'm worried if I'm going to like it...

[Mithalwen]

So do I Lalaith but it is quite clear that he doesn't like the book, and probably liked the films as action films blah blah.... I guess he was never going to be into it .. as ahs been discussed elsewhere there is a section of the Literati who dislike Tolkien on principle and othere who genuinely don't get it - and that doesn't stop them having good judgement in other areas . I get the feeling that he is a genuine in his dislike (a don't like rather than a won't like) .. so I don't let him put you off.

[Tigerlily Gamgee]

If ya'll want to see the musical and have a LOTR packed weekend... check out going to this event in July...
http://www.gatheringofthefellowship.org

[Diamond18]

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.
Advertisement

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.

[Diamond18]

Staged 'Rings' gets grand praise, but not from critics


By BETH DUFF-BROWN
Associated Press
Posted: March 31, 2006

Toronto - Though theater critics were tepid in their reviews of the stage version of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," the granddaughter of the legendary English author praised it for staying true to his classic tale.
Advertisement

In town late last month for the lavish world premiere at the Princess of Wales Theatre, Rachel Tolkien said she admired the opulent sets and Finnish music and felt the 3 1/2-hour spectacle was a lovely retelling of her grandfather's Middle-earth saga.

"The set is incredible, the costumes are beautiful," said Tolkien, 35, adding that "The Hobbit" was first read to her when she was 6 years old. "Everything to me that is the most important, and the most moving in the book, they've gotten on the stage. I think it's an amazing feat to have made 'The Lord of the Rings' in three-and-a-half hours."

Tolkien, who runs an art gallery in the south of France, said she wondered if her grandfather's story, adapted by Shaun McKenna and director Matthew Warchus, would borrow from the wildly successful film trilogy by Peter Jackson.

"I was just curious to see whether the film would influence the flavor of the stage set, and I don't think it did," she said. "I think it's quite different and original."

Some critics said it was too different and original for the audience to comprehend.

The New York Times called the production "a murky, labyrinthine wood from which no one emerges with head unmuddled, eyes unblurred or eardrums unrattled."

The Toronto Star dubbed it "bored of the Rings," and Associated Press theater critic Michael Kuchwara called the production "a case of imagination overwhelmed by complexity."

Billed as the most expensive musical ever at $25 million, Toronto is pinning its hopes on the show revitalizing the city's beleaguered theater industry, which has never fully recovered from the SARS outbreak in the spring of 2003. The city lost an estimated $1 billion in tourism dollars, after 44 people died of the respiratory syndrome.

[The Sixth Wizard]

I'm a bit biased, I mean, what would Tolkien say?

[Glirdan]

I have wonderful news!! The Performing Arts students in my school will have the wonderful opportunity to go see the musical this fall!! I can't wait!! This is going to be the experience of a lifetime!!

[Tigerlily Gamgee]

In less than two months I'll be able to give my personal review.
I'm on the committee for The Gathering of the Fellowship as the Stage Liason... so, I'm hoping that I'll get an up close and personal view of it. I can't wait to see it... I just can't wait for my vacation, really.
Anyone else going to The Gathering?

[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

[Bêthberry]

A report today in the Globe claims that there are plans for a German production of the show for 2008. Won't Sharkey be happy!

Originally Posted by Guy Dixon

Gollum to follow Rings to London
Canadian actor earned acclaim portraying a sad creature obsessed with his 'precious'
GUY DIXON

Canadian actor Michael Therriault, acclaimed for his role as the darkly amusing, deeply psychotic Gollum, is among the cast members being asked to join the stage production of The Lord of the Rings when it moves from Toronto to London.

Casting hasn't been finalized and full auditions won't start in London until the fall. But a casting announcement for some of the lead roles could come in September as the producers prepare to stage Rings at London's Theatre Royal Drury Lane, opening May 7.

When asked about Mr. Therriault continuing as Gollum, producer Kevin Wallace confirmed by phone from London that "you would be right to speculate that I would be having a conversation with him."

Mr. Therriault, who grew up in Oakville, Ont., recently won a Dora Mavor Moore Award for the physically demanding role as the ring-obsessed creature. Spitting lines on stage night after night since The Lord of the Rings began previews in Toronto in February, Mr. Therriault has been consistently praised as a showstopper.

As announced this week, the Toronto production will close Sept. 3. Although the $28-million show hasn't continuously attracted sell-out crowds in Toronto as hoped, another reason for the closing date is to allow enough time to transport the heavy, elaborate stage and sets to England to be reworked and fitted into the Drury Lane theatre.

The London production is expected to take on an even more British flavour. The cast will be mostly local actors, in large part because of British actors' union rules. However, many of the leads in the Toronto production have been played by British actors, including James Loye as hobbit hero Frodo. Mr. Wallace said discussions with some of the Canadian cast will start this summer and a few actors and stunt people could remain with the production.

A similar situation will occur in Germany, with a predominantly German cast playing most of the parts, when a third production of Rings is staged in that country beginning in 2008. The actual city has yet to be announced, Mr. Wallace said, because the arrival of Rings in Germany will mark the departure of another production, and those involved don't want to make that publicly known yet.

[Child of the 7th Age]

Sorry to hear this. I was hoping for a great success eventually followed by a touring company.

It's interesting... We rant and rave at PJ (myself included), but the one thing he could certainly do was put bodies in the seats. Admittedly, it's a far cry from a mass market movie audience to a $120 ticket for a stage show. But, whatever the medium, any work of art must have an audience.

I just wonder how much of this "failure" was the difficulty that JRRT identified--the problem of condensing such a long tale into a single production. So far I can't remember a single instance of the LotR being successfully adapted into a single film or play. If anyone else can, please let me know. Even Ralph Bakshi ended up truncating the production, ostensibly for monetary reasons.

Thanks Bb for passing on this news. Even before I read this post, I noticed on e-bay that a few folk were "dumping" their memorabilia from the play. I just don't have a good feeling about the long range fate of this production, but I hope I am wrong.

[Tigerlily Gamgee]

Ok, so I saw the musical about a month ago... and here's my shortish SPOILERISH review:

Hobbits: The Hobbits were handled the best out of any of the characters. They took some time in the beginning to set up a little background about them and to give you a good idea of what kind of people they were. Their spirit and care free nature was well shown. Frodo and Sam's relationship didn't get explained much in the beginning, but they were the best represented characters in the whole musical. In Mordor they had a great song about that tied into the part in the book where they are talking about the great stories and wondering if they'll ever be in one. It had a sweet melody and great lyrics... I got teary... they tied Gollum into it well, too, and showed how he used to be a Hobbit. Merry and Pippin were ok, but rushed. However, when they first joined up with Frodo and Sam they all had a great traveling song to the theme of "The Road Goes Ever On and On." Merry and Pippin did meet Treebeard, and the Ents were sort of cool, but their time on stage was brief. One thing that made fans happy too... The Scouring... it was there... but Bill Ferny played the role that Wormtongue would've otherwise played.

Elves: The second best represented. Lothlorien was great in that the whole Fellowship was blind folded (for Gimli's sake)... which was left out of the movies. Galadriel, however, was odd... it was mainly her costume. She had a lovely song about Lothlorien, though... but I think it was a wee bit too long. Arwen was handled nicely... in fact, I think the romance between her and Aragorn showed better in the musical than it did in the movie. I got teary from that too!

Men: The world of men was poorly handled. Aragorn was underdeveloped, Boromir was kinda of one dimensional, Theoden had no depth, Eowyn was there but they didn't mention any relevance to the fact of her killing the Withcking, Faramir and Denethor were non existant because they never went to Gondor. There was only one battle that was kind of a combination of Helm's Deep and the Black Gates. It was handled ok, but still... no depth.

Technical stuff: The puppetry was great! Shelob was handled very well... the Black Riders were awesome looking... The Balrog had nice effects, but had it not been for the effects I think it would've looked like a giant pinata.

Other characters: I didn't like Gandalf. Brent Carver is a fine actor and I've always wanted to see him in something, but he wasn't Gandalf... but I could've told you that when he was first announced as being cast in that role. Legolas and Gimli were just there because they sorta had to be... nothing much about them.

That's it, in a nutshell... I'll be happy to answer any questions anyone has about it.

[davem]

I notice that the book of the stage show is published tomorrow.

here

[Mithalwen]

yesterday when my darling god-daughter showed me her birthday present form her uncle which was a pair of tickets for the first night in London and said "Do you want one of these?"

I think youcan guess the answer....

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

yesterday when my darling god-daughter showed me her birthday present form her uncle which was a pair of tickets for the first night in London and said "Do you want one of these?"

I think youcan guess the answer....

Now that's an interesting Christmas present! When is it on?

and Merry Christmas!