"The Lord of the Rings"

While I was in London recently I went to see a musical that I was intrigued by: "The Lord of the Rings". As a moderate fan of the somewhat windy novel, and a major fan of the nearly perfect movie series, I wondered how the sprawling story could ever be crunched down into a three-hour stage presentation.

To be perfectly honest, I think that for anyone without a grounding in the story, this musical will be confusing and inpenetrable. Even though it has been remarkably streamlined, (Rohan? What's that?) there's still a lot of characters and peoples and places to try and keep up with.

How does it stack up for Tolkienphiles? I wasn't particularly annoyed by any choices they made. It almost seems as if they went out their way to reintroduce aspects of the original story that Peter Jackson left behind. (Saruman's plan to overthrow Sauron, the scouring of the Shire, even a quick mention of Tom Bombadil) It's pretty drastically cut down, but the essence is still there.

As a technical stage production, it was quite good. The costumes and "sets" are all well done. And the stage itself, with counter-rotating multi-level sections rising and falling, does a nice job of simulating mountains and castles and whatnot. The representation of the giant spider Shelob gave me chills.

As a musical, it was okay, nothing special. The performers sang well enough, but I won't be rushing out to buy the CD.

I'm glad I saw it, but I can't really recommend it to anyone unless they really are Tolkien completists.