The Lord of the Rings, the musical, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a lot like having lunch at a Sunday carvery. You get served up a gargantuan plateful that looks wonderful at first but, when it boils down to it, there are a few good bits surrounded by a lot of dross.
Credit must go to Matthew Warchus and Shaun McKenna for cramming Tolkien’s entire sprawling epic into an endurable 3 ½ hour stint and anyone familiar with the book will be pleased to hear that they have scrapped the original author’s awful songs in favour of new lyrics of their own. Unfortunately for them and all of us, The Lord of the Rings just doesn’t work as a musical. It is too serious a story for sudden snatches of song and the musical numbers are clunking gaps in the breakneck narration.
Much has been made of the high production values and innovative design and indeed you are in the Shire when you walk into Drury Lane. It is a pity that Rob Howell used up all his ideas on the set: the costumes are so exact a replica of Peter Jackson’s films that the cast might be guests at a lavish theme party in his honour.
The special effects and mixture of theatrical techniques are truly spectacular: the Black Riders are as terrifying as the acrobatic Orcs and it was not just the kids who were squeaking with fear at the sight of the giant spider Shelob. The peak of the performance comes just before the first interval when Malcolm Storry’s Gandalf falls into the fire locked in combat with the Balrog and it’s worth going just to see that.
The production and, in fairness, Tolkien’s story never scale such heights again: the show limps along in its final hour with the ensemble cast performing what is almost a Benny Hill sketch as they run off and on again: “We’re Elves! We’re Orcs! We’re Riders! We’re trees on stilts! We’re hobbits! We’re Elves again!”
Michael Therriault requires no digital trickery to excel as a wonderfully slinking Gollum and Laura Michelle Kelly does her best to add some magic as Galadriel but there’s no escaping the mounds of congealing vegetables in this Middle Earth.
The Lord of the Rings is showing at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London until 29 March 2008. The Official European premiere is 19 June 2007.
