Bored of the Bling

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.

5 squid doesn’t get you much these days…

But when the moon and the stars align and the feng shui is just right, it may get you a ticket in the Royal Circle to ‘Guys and Dolls’ (usual rrp = approximately £55).

Oliphant!

One of the more amazing sights about London two weekends ago… a giant mechanically operated elephant, three storeys high, a carriage atop its back where various women in indian costume and a man in 18th century suit were scurrying about, and capable of spurting water onto the delighted masses following its path through Central London. Based on a Jules Verne story and apparently a project five years in the making between the Nantes-based theatre company Royal de Luxe, the Arts Council of England and the Mayor of London, Red Ken himself.

I caught up with the Sultan’s Elephant as it headed down Pall Mall and followed it (and the truck behind it housing a French band playing strangely appropriate Gallic soft rock) as it turned up into St James Street. There was lots of delighted squealing from recipients of the water spraying from the elephant’s trunk and it certainly helped that London turned on the warmest day of the year to date. But the crowds all got a bit too much for me when the pachyderm inexplicably came to a halt on Picadilly and went to sleep. Yes, its limbs went quite limp and its eyes actually closed. At that stage, I decided to make my escape through Mayfair, following – ahem – the siren call of Selfridges.

Despite the comments of the Guardian’s curmudgeonly theatre critic, Michael Billington, and the fact that the elephant’s journey caused all sorts of traffic problems, I’m all for huge mechanical animals parading through one’s city to the strains of cheesey French soft rock/mystic cithar music.

Coming soon to a city near you! (well, if you’re near Antwerp, Calais and le Havre)

Official Sultan’s Elephant website.