The Ottery
“If an otter can’t have fun doing something, it just simply won’t do it.”

Rituals and The Lord of the Rings on Stage

March 27th, 2006

First off, I haven’t seen the new Lord of the Rings musical, which opened on March 23 in Toronto, so I won’t be commenting directly about it. I have been reading its reviews avidly for the past few days, though, as I’ve been sick at home with the flu. Most of the reviews are mediocre-to-negative, which I kind of expected, but I’m struck by a few common themes that have popped up among them.

Both the New York Times review and the Entertainment Weekly review (available in print, but not online yet) described the new musical as a ritual incomprehensible to the uninitiated. The last paragraph of the Entertainment Weekly review is so interesting that I have to quote it here:

“Yet Rings is more passion play than puppet show, and like all passion plays, it’s best at moving the hearts of the already faithful, those with the scriptures memorized and no disbelief to suspend. The less-than-observant (in every sense) may not have the slightest idea what’s going on, though they’d have to be made of troll-stone not to be moved by the abundant magic of Warchus [the director] and Co.’s propulsive visual storytelling. Tears will be shed by believer and nonbeliever alike. But if you’re looking for a close personal relationship with Frodo, I’d recommend private devotion. No one comes to a cathedral for the intimacy.”

I’d argue that both grandeur and intimacy are possible in a cathedral . . . but can they both be present in a theater production of Lord of the Rings?

Film is perhaps the best medium for conveying both grandeur and intimacy, and the Peter Jackson films can take you from sweeping mountain vistas to the agony, joy, or relief on human faces (or to Elijah Wood’s buggy eyes, which failed to convey any of the above). Those of you who know me know that I had some major problems with the film trilogy, but I acknowledge that film is indeed the best medium for giving the audience everything they want in a fantasy epic.

Theater, however, does not merely “give” to an audience. You have to invest yourself in it to get something out of it, and in that way seeing a play is more like reading—or like worshiping in a church service. So I’m not sure a theater production of Lord of the Rings should try to convey large-scale visual grandeur. Create characters that are real, and the audience will suspend disbelief and see the world that the characters see.

I admit that I’m biased because, before the Jackson films, before the Warchus musical, I saw excellent theater productions of The Two Towers and The Return of the King (they’d done The Fellowship of the Ring previously, but I missed it—there were two years between each volume of the trilogy) at Lifeline Theatre in Chicago.

The sets were minimalist, the actors wore all black, fantasy creatures and whole armies were evoked through shadow puppetry, yet both the mythic scope and the depth of human (yes, human, even if they’re hobbits!) emotion shone through. And I can guarantee you that they had a small budget.

What I can’t comment on is if this intimate version of Lord of the Rings would have spoken to the uninitiated, since I’ve been of the Tolkien elect since age 7 (the same year I was baptized into the Church, actually . . . hmmm). But I was pleased that the Lifeline productions invited me in, asked my imagination to be involved, and let me become part of the Fellowship.

Daily Telegraph reviewer Charles Spencer writes of the Toronto Lord of the Rings musical, “How could any stage production hope to match the thrills of the Oscar-winning trilogy of films, which used no end of CGI effects to make the dreamlike and the fantastical come true? Well, now we know. It couldn’t.”

Maybe not. But good theater productions of Lord of the Rings do exist, if not in Toronto, and they offer the grandeur of Myth (which doesn’t “come true,” for it always is true) that stirs the soul.

Entry Filed under: Books, Movies, Uncategorized