Rings is stunning tuneless yawn
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007280413,00.html
Beautiful but lacks musical lustre ... Frodo
and Gandalf left, and royal elf Galadriel right
RELATED STORIES
• Rings show put on hold
FULL NEWS INDEX ››
TOP DISCUSSIONS
Rushdie: Right to knight?
Portugal Police blast McCanns!
Ziggy losing plot over Chanelle?
Fat kids neglected by parents?
SEE ALL DISCUSSIONS
By BILL HAGERTY
Sun Theatre Critic
June 20, 2007
COMMENT ON THIS STORY
THE LORD OF THE RINGS
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London
YOU’VE never seen spectacle like it. Trouble is, you can’t come out of the
theatre humming spectacle.
For fans of J R R Tolkien’s books and the hugely successful film
trilogy, there are wizard wizards, spooky Black Riders, magical elves,
spring-heeled orcs, stilt-walking, tree-like ents and a scary,
40ft-wide spider. But where are the songs?
Stilted ... an Ent towers over the stage
The
music is written by the Indian A R Rahman and Finnish folk group
Värttinä so one might have guessed it wouldn’t threaten Andrew Lloyd
Webber.
But the melodies are almost tune-free, consisting of little but lush and very
loud moody themes with crashing crescendos.
And the lyrics, written by Shaun McKenna and the show’s director
Matthew Warchus, aren’t up to much, although so swamped are they by the
17- strong pit band that it’s difficult to tell.
What’s more, despite the occasional services of an unseen narrator,
the complicated story requires further long-winded explanation.
“Mr Gandalf, sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says
brave hobbit Frodo, whereupon the action stops while Gandalf fills him
in.
Mind you, it’s absolutely necessary — the rest of us at the final preview
didn’t know what Gandalf was talking about, either.
Overblown, over-orchestrated and now over here, the show that began
life in Toronto 15 months ago has lost half an hour or more on its
transatlantic trip.
It’s not enough. Three ponderous hours are broken only by one
interval and a short, scene-shifting break when those giant,
beetle-like orcs threateningly patrol the aisles — presumably to stop
the audience leaving.
NI_MPU('middle');
NI_MPU('Embedded for DHTML');
I reckon there are too many minuses for the show to be the massive
hit necessary for the £12.5million investment to be recouped, even if
every Tolkien junkie in the country flocks to Drury Lane.
But there are some pluses as the famous Fellowship of nine set out
to destroy the all-powerful ring and rid Middle-earth of the evil Dark
Lord, Sauron.
There’s a potentially award-winning performance from Michael
Therriault, star of the Canadian production, whose wheedling, whining,
slithery Gollum makes his entrance by crawling head first from ceiling
to stage.
He’s brilliant and so is Peter Howe as Sam, Frodo’s friend and the
real hero of the story in my book. Rob Howell’s costumes and sets are
terrific, too — the mystical forest stretches halfway across the
auditorium roof and walls.
And Peter Darling, the man responsible for the dynamic dancing in
the stage version of Billy Elliot, contributes some sprightly
choreography, even if the sameness of the battle scenes eventually
defeats him.
Caught napping ... Gollum, played by Michael Therriault attacks Sam and
Frodo
But even with a cast of thousands — just over 50 actually, but they
run about a lot — and all that money turning the stage into a
forbidding fairyland,
The Lord Of The Rings is a disappointment.
I was glad to get out of my seat and hobbit, sorry hop it, home at the end.
