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Tolkien classic takes to the stage
By This is London 09.02.07
The show's cast befriend a menacing-looking Ringwraith horse outside the Drury Lane theatre
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The West End stage version of The Lord Of The Rings was launched today - with the director admitting he visited JRR Tolkien's grave to say sorry for turning his classic books into a musical.
The £25 million production - the most expensive in West End history - boasts an all-singing, all-dancing cast of orcs and hobbits.
Director Matthew Warchus said he is confident the production will be a hit with British audiences, despite a critical mauling on its debut in Toronto.
Nevertheless, he travelled to the author's final resting place in Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxfordshire, to apologise in advance.
"I visited his grave a few months ago to kind of apologise and get his seal of approval. It was a magical moment," Warchus said.
"I apologised just in case he didn't like the idea of his novel becoming a stage show."
The production opens at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane on June 19. Warchus describes it as "Shakespeare meets Cirque du Soleil".
With a 50-strong cast and a backstage staff of 130, it is a huge production boasting pyrotechnics, acrobatics and special effects to recreate Middle Earth.
The dancers playing the evil orcs bound across the stage with the help of PowerSkip springs attached to their feet, while the tree shepherds are on three-metre-high stilts.
All have undergone weeks of intensive physical training for their roles. The cast of hobbits are all on the diminutive side - producers imposed a height restriction of 5ft 6in.
Star of the show is Laura Michelle Kelly, best known to West End audiences as Mary Poppins and Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady.
Kelly, 25, plays the Elvish queen Galadriel, portrayed in the film trilogy by Cate Blanchett. The award-winning actress is making her return to the stage after a year-long break.
"Galadriel is quite similar in character to Mary Poppins: a powerful female role," said Kelly. I'm so excited about this show. They are doing things never seen before on stage. It's a new genre of musical. It's going to step up a level."
The hero of The Lord of the Rings, Frodo, will be played by 27-year-old James Loye, who appeared in the Canadian production. The show played for six months at the Princess of Wales theatre in Toronto.
Critics were unimpressed. The Toronto Star renamed it "Bored of the Rings" while Hollywood trade magazine Variety called it "a saga of short people burdened by power jewellery".
As a result, the production has been radically reworked for its West End debut. The running time has been cut by 40 minutes to three hours and the script overhauled.
Warchus said: "Toronto revealed to me how close we had come to getting it right and which areas needed to be recalibrated. We tried to do too much, tried to get too much onto the stage.
"The differences are wholesale. Every part of the script, the music, the staging, has been assessed and reassessed over the past nine months.
"I think Toronto was a stepping stone. In my mind, I call London the world premiere."
And he added: "It will be a different audience here - the British know their theatre.
"It will be as entertaining a three hours as you could hope to spend in a theatre. It's a dramatic spectacle with dancing, singing, battles and illusions. I call it the best story in the West End.
"We have all the characters and the elements of the enchanting world Tolkien created, but have turned it into a piece of theatre in its own right.
"It's definitely a different experience from the film and the novel as well. It's a more emotional experience simply because you are immersed in it. The illusion is that the production comes right out into your laps. It will be a very magical evening."
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