Lord of the Rings: The Musical.
Not a phrase to whet a theatre-goer’s appetite, really – even one who was a Tolkien aficionado (for background, during my adolescence and teens I read and re-read his books dozens of times, bought copies of various special editions and wrote a pained, torturous high school thesis on some obscure, forgettable LOTR theme). I had paid scant attention to reports of the demise of the first stage adaptation in Toronto and certainly was not interested in seeing if the West End could make it palatable.
But Tues night found me sitting in an £80 stall seat in the magnificent Drury Lane Theatre, courtesy of a friend who had wrangled some free tickets. A magnificently thorny hedge had seemingly sprung from each side of the stage and had crept its way to the rafters and forward to engulf half the ceiling and the first two boxes. But the hobbits gambolling about the audience and the stage during the pre-show, capturing wondrously life-like fireflies were frankly, irritating. Admittedly, I have never appreciated Tolkien’s love for his daft, exasperating hobbits at the best of times.
