 | 24 September 2014 |
|
| 91热爆 91热爆page | | |
| |||
| Contact Us | | |
ReviewsYou are in: London > Entertainment > Theatre > Reviews > First night: The Lord of the Rings  It's 'total theatre', say its creators First night: The Lord of the RingsOur critic Mark Shenton goes to Middle-earth to find an other worldly theatrical spectacle. Plus, read YOUR comments below... Money can't buy you love, they say - but it can definitely buy an audience's attention. And in what is being widely reported as one of the most expensive musicals ever to open in the West End, that's the first significant hurdle that this production effortlessly leaps over: harnessing an audience's imagination in pursuit of the production's own realization of one.  Laura Michelle Kelly plays Galadriel While eyebrows were understandably raised at the prospect of translating Tolkien's 1,200 page mythical adventure novel to the stage, I was knocked out by the epic sweep and stagecraft of Matthew Warchus's production when I first saw it open in Toronto in March last year. But that production failed to run commercially. Now it has been substantially revised and clarified before re-opening in a somewhat shorter version in London - three hours and 15 minutes, with one interval, instead of closer to four hours, with two intervals. Its creators, who include Shaun McKenna who co-wrote the book and lyrics with Warchus and an eclectic team of composers that include India's AR Rahman, Finnish pop group Varttina and English musical supervisor Christopher Nightingale, were reluctant to simply call it a musical. flurry of motionRather, they preferred to see it as a piece of "total theatre" that merely borrowed some of its conventions. But while there's nothing conventional about the result of their efforts, they've turned it into something that now behaves more like a real musical. It still suffers, perhaps inevitably, from a surfeit of exposition.
But there's an excess of exhilaration, too, with the stage kept in a constant commotion of movement thanks to the spectacular, undulating, intersecting sets of designer Rob Howell and the strange, troubling figures - such as the Black Riders, Orcs and a giant spider - that he has created. The cast are also a flurry of motion who, thanks to Peter Darling's athletic and dynamic choreography, animate it spectacularly. Tolkien's story has a dark, tangled intensity of its own as it stages a massive battle of good and evil and the attempt to return a ring with demotic powers to the place it was forged in. Here, its characters are brought to the stage by a vast ensemble cast that includes stand-out turns from Michael Therriault as the galvanisingly troubled Caliban-like Gollum and Malcolm Storry's imperious Prospero-figure of Gandalf to remind one of Shakespeare's The Tempest. The Lord of the Rings is at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Catherine Street WC2. Tickets 拢15 - 拢60. Box office: 0870 890 6002. Booking to 29 March 2008last updated: 02/05/2008 at 14:01 Have Your Say
Kirsty
Lee K
Lyn
Bob
Claudia Redmond
Dave
Jon
Paul
Maureen Crellin
mmi
Ms S
Ronaldo You are in: London > Entertainment > Theatre > Reviews > First night: The Lord of the Rings
|
| | About the 91热爆 | Help | Terms of Use | Privacy & Cookies Policy 听 |
