Reviews 2006
Reviews 2006
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music by A.R. Rahman, Värttinä with Christopher Nightingale,
book and lyrics by Shaun McKenna and Matthew Warchus,
directed by Matthew Warchus
Kevin Wallace & Saul Zaentz, Princess of Wales Theatre, Toronto
March 23-September 3, 2006
"Too Precious"
Costing about $27 million dollars (Canadian) and billed as the most expensive theatrical event ever staged, the stage version of “The Lord of the Rings” has finally opened at the Princess of Wales Theatre. As it turns out LOTR is not the disaster some feared nor is it the brilliant success one might have hoped for. The show does far better than one might expect in the dubious goal turning J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic trilogy into a single evening’s entertainment, but the creators still need to decide what they want to do most with the story--to make it sing, to impress us visually or to tell the story well. They accomplish the second, but should forget the first and concentrate on the third.
When LOTR was first announced it was billed as a musical. It is not a musical and LOTR publicity no longer claims it is. Rather, it is a theatrical spectacle bursting with technical wizardry, a 3 1/2 hour-long play dominated by talk and action accompanied by continual orchestral music. Songs arise only when characters might naturally sing whether to celebrate, comfort or entertain. Indian composer A.R. Rahman’s sweeping exotic action film scoring contrasts nicely with Finnish folk group Värttinä’s homey Hobbit melodies.
The idea of trying to condense a thousand-page epic to material for one evening seems hopelessly quixotic. After all, filmmaker Philip Jackson needed nine hours of film to tell the story and still had to leave much out. To add largely unnecessary songs to the tale means that there is even less time to tell the story. Authors Shaun McKenna and Matthew Warchus spend half the running time on the trilogy’s first book, then fast forward to the ending. As a result anyone unfamiliar with the novels or films will likely have difficulty following the story.
The quest of the Hobbits Frodo and Sam as aided by the wizard Gandalf and hindered by the corrupted Hobbit Gollum becomes the main plot. The friendship of Frodo and Sam is the show’s one solid emotional anchor. The only subplot to receive much attention is the romance between the human Aragorn (known as Strider) and the half-elf Arwen, who must forego immortality if she chooses to marry Aragorn. Unless you’ve seen the film you won’t know that the huge red eye projected on the back wall represents Sauron and even then the show never makes clear who he is. The same is true of the broken sword Narsil of King Elendil, the kind of detail whose meaning only Tolkien aficionados will know. Those fans will be happy to know that this LOTR, unlike the film, includes Gandalf’s and Frodo’s final meetings with Saruman.
The show’s design is terrific. As you enter the auditorium of the Princess of Wales Theatre you may be disoriented by moving leaf patterns on the floor. That is because before the show and during the action and intermissions, the auditorium is lit for effect just like the stage. Designer Rob Howell’s fantastic set of intertwining tree branches extends from the proscenium over the ceiling and across the first boxes on the sides of the theatre to envelop us in the world of Middle Earth. The Hobbits are already busy with the task of catching fireflies requiring them to run through and over seats while to try to find your place. It may be a throwback to the environmental approach of “Cats”, but it creates a warm, whimsical mood right from the start.
Howell’s costumes are very similar to those in the films with the wizards in hooded cloaks, the elves in white and the Hobbits in earth tones. His imagining of the circus-trained Orcs, Black Riders and Ents is a particular triumph, the first on boots with bent metal springs and the second two on stilts. Audience members may not even see the disappointing tin-foil Balrog that does battle with Gandalf in Act 1 since at that moment wind machines blow huge quantities of smoke and black paper “ashes” into the audience. The giant spider Shelob that does battle with Sam in Act 3 is much more effective because there is no attempt to hide the black-clad assistants manipulating its legs. Throughout the show clouds scud across the cyclorama at the back of the stage, changing in nature to accord with the mood of the action.
Dominating the stage is a 40-tonne, three-ringed revolve fourteen metres in diameter containing seventeen independent elevators, the centre of which can rise three metres above the stage. It is used to thrilling effect in travelling and battle scenes. Frequently characters chase across the three rings while the rings are in motion and while the elevators simultaneously reshape the landscape traversed with their rising and falling. It’s an impressive piece of machinery, but inevitably you find yourself watching more what it is doing than what the actors are doing on it. Worse, director Matthew Warchus is often tempted to use it for spectacle at the expense of narrative clarity. His staging of the climactic struggle between Frodo and Gollum on Mount Doom is hopelessly confused.
The producers have assembled an absolutely top-notch cast. James Loye and Peter Howe play Hobbit friends Frodo and Sam with great feeling. The change in Frodo’s mood under the malign influence of the ring and Sam’s mounting concern and vigilance over him become the core of the entire drama. Carly Street’s Arwen and Evan Buliung’s Aragorn radiate heroism and love tinged with sadness. Brent Carver is basically too young to play Gandalf. He suggests the wizard’s world-weariness but the old man voice he puts on communicates weakness not authority. Michael Therriault has the juiciest role as the decrepit Gollum, once a Hobbit known as Sméagol, obsessed with regaining his “precious”, the ring. He’s a tortured character in which good and evil constantly vie for dominance. But Therriault, in full scenery-chewing mode, gives him so many tics and twitches it’s distracting. Since he screeches out all his lines it’s difficult for far too long to tell which personality is which.
The rest of the cast have very little to do. Owen Sharpe and Dylan Roberts as Frodo’s Hobbit companions Pippin and Merry are given no room to develop their personalities and come off more as Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Richard McMillan as the evil wizard Saruman, curiously costumed like a Chinese mandarin, periodically strides in to growl at people and exit. Cliff Saunders as Bilbo Baggins does create at least a rough sketch of the Hobbit who brought the ring back to the Shire, but such fine actor/singers as Victor A. Young and Gabriel Burrafato as the elves Elrond and Legolas make the most of their few lines but otherwise simply stand about looking noble. Shawn Wright does get a chance to bring out the humour in Barliman Butterbur and especially in the painstakingly deliberate Treebeard, but Dion Johnstone’s Boromir is killed off before we get a chance to know him.
Among the women Rebecca Jackson Mendoza’s Galadriel seems to have dropped in from Las Vegas not Lothlórien. The gooey Celine Dion-like ballad she’s given serves no purpose and is delivered in a casino style alien to the rest of the show. Ayrin Mackie makes Éowyn an appealing character but, as with Boromir, her plotline is over only moments after it begins. Through demeanour more than words Kristin Galler shows Rosie Cotton to be a simple, honest fun-loving Hobbit girl, enough really to see why Sam loves her.
The producers seem to have made three fundamental mistakes in approaching the material. First, to begin with the conception of LOTR as a musical was wrong-headed. Instead, the focus should have been on telling the story on stage as well as possible and if music comes to play a part, so much the better. This is the situation the producers have arrived at, but sequences like the long, pointless song-and-dance number at the Painted Pony Inn or Galadriel’s equally pointless ballad are relics of this earlier conception that literally stop the action in a show that is already pressed for time. Second, the producers should not have been fixated on the idea of telling such an epic tale in only one evening. The fact that the first preview lasted 5 1/2 hours should have indicated that they had more material than a single evening could hold. The RSC had a major success with its two-part “Nicholas Nickleby” as did the RNT with its two-part “His Dark Materials”, both presented to sell-out crowds. LOTR, with a fan-base even larger than for a lesser Dickens novel or Philip Pullman’s trilogy, could surely have stood a two-part treatment and would have become more of an event at the same time. The third error is the belief in expensive machinery over imagination. While the central revolve is a marvelous device, it is Paul Pyant’s sensational lighting that more than any other single element is responsible for creating a sense of mood and setting throughout the show.
Indeed, despite all the ultra-high-tech accoutrements, the simplest scenes are the best. Visually the most beautiful scene is when Bilbo recounts the time when the Hobbit Déagol dived deep into a river to retrieve the ring and we see actor Joel Benson “swim” down from the above the proscenium to the stage floor to illustrate the narrative. Emotionally, the high points are also simple--Aragorn’s leave-taking from Arwen or Sam singing to Frodo to calm his fears. If only there were more moments like these, the show could fill us with wonder. Here, not in million-dollar machinery, the real magic lies.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Cast of The Lord of the Rings. ©Frank Gunn.
2006-03-27
The Lord of the Rings