Andrew Haydon
posted 27 June 2007

Lord of the Rings the musical arrives in the West End at the reported cost of some £12.5 million - that would be roughly a quarter of this year’s entire Grants for the Arts budget, folks. The seat from which I reviewed (a good halfway back in the Grand Circle) will set a paying punter back £60. Given the circumstances, anything less than perfection seems inexcusable.

Do I need to explain the plot? A hobbit’s uncle found a ring in a previous book, and the hobbit in question spends the next three books trying to take it back to whence it came in order to destroy it, whilst various wizards, orcs, walking trees, dwarves and men pitch a series of battles against one another.

There is much here that is commendable. The multi-layered rising and falling, revolving stage is impressive; the sheer array of lighting, smoke machines and amplification is remarkable; and there are nice touches - the realisation of the Black Riders from Mordor especially so. But, crumbs, there is some hogwash too. The music is the chief offender in this category. It could be a lot worse - Gollum isn’t given his own torch-song, the Orcs don’t get a rousing 'Hard Knock Life'-type number (a pity in many respects). A majority of the obvious potential pitfalls are avoided. But new pitfalls are introduced and promptly fallen into: the most notable being that there isn’t a single decent, catchy song. One can’t imagine sales of the soundtrack soaring, or any of the numbers becoming part of the West End repertory. That’s fine - the music is inherently bound to the action - in many ways LotR-tM is more Wagnerian in concept than a set of songs with the story fitted in around them. In fact, there are large stretches where there are no songs at all.

The music itself divides pretty evenly across four types: hobbits are represented by a kind of ersatz Irish folk which recalls particularly syrupy adverts for Kerrygold butter or the like - the first big number at the Prancing Pony Inn sounds like nothing so much as a school production of Oliver! gamely taking on the Pogues. Songs from elves, of which there are unexpectedly many, tend toward a kind of cross between Enya and the Le Mystere de voix Bulgares. A tune singing the praises of Lothlórien ('from the west she appeared, sunlight and stars in her hair / in her eyes an undying memory of home, a land that is magical and fair / when her feet came to rest, deep in a canopy glade / she lifted her face and there she danced - the realm of Lothlórien she made') sounds bizarrely like an elvish Eurovision entry - somewhere between Bulgaria and Moldova, if you’re interested. There is also a certain amount of sub-Wagnerian martial stuff, but by far the worst offender is the number of Celine Dion style ballads, mostly sung by Aragorn and Arwen. Aside from the latter, it’s not often painfully bad; much of it is wholly bearable, if a little kitsch, but it’s pretty banal stuff.

Other caveats should be levelled at the absurd bouncing orcs and the frankly tokenistic fight choreography. Indeed, given the spectacular nature of the budget, the staging is surprisingly tame, and much of it either deeply old-fashioned or shoe-hornedly modish, offering both that old RSC staple of having the surprisingly sparse fight scenes bulked out by people waving flags and the increasingly common use of aerialists - cf Tim Supple’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Gisli Örn Gardarsson’s Woyzeck and most of Kneehigh’s recent shows.

In terms of the actual adaptation, it is certainly pacey. Indeed, were the company so minded, they could easily be billing this as the Reduced Tolkien Company. But that’s fine; most of the plot of Lord of the Rings is overlong and incomprehensible. Sadly here it is much shorter but still probably pretty tricky to follow for the uninitiated. But how many of those are there? Will anyone who hasn’t watched the films or read the book be booking tickets? One suspects not. In terms of actual drama, there is precious little (no pun intended). Occasional scenes stand out: Bilbo trying to get the ring off Frodo, and later Gollum trying to do likewise, are both genuinely well-acted bits of theatre. In many ways it’s a shame that there isn’t more actual drama rather than the rapid expositionary speechifying which tends to dominate. That said, Michael Therriault’s Gollum is excellent, albeit in much the same way as Andy Serkis and Peter Woodthorpe were before him in the film and radio/animation versions respectively.

Overall, LotR-tM isn’t actually bad, so much as frequently ludicrous. I suspect that it will continue to delight many of those who go to see it, while people who find the entire project deeply suspect and vastly over-priced will be equally delighted to have avoided it.

Till 29 March 2008.