Sam Marlowe is bijzonder enthousiast in de London Times en geeft ****:

It’s finally here — the year’s most anticipated theatrical opening, costing £12.5 million and heralded by high hopes on one hand and prophecies of doom on the other. When I saw Matthew Warchus’s production in Toronto last year, I was dazzled and delighted by its ingenuity and visual invention. I was also frustrated by its slower, muddier passages, unimpressed by some key performances and deeply disappointed by its bungled climax.

Happily, almost everything that was wrong has been put right. Some will prefer the slick grandiosity of Peter Jackson’s films; others will sneer at the very idea of singing hobbits. It’s their loss. Warchus and his team have a created a brave, stirring, epic piece of popular theatre that, without slavishly adhering to J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels, embraces their spirit. The show has charm, wit, and jaw-dropping theatrical brio; crucially, it also has real emotional heft.

Warchus’s and Shaun McKenna’s book has been streamlined, but at more than three hours the show is still long — yet it doesn’t outstay its welcome. Rob Howell’s stunning tree-roots design stretches out into the auditorium, and performers, too, spill from the stage, creating a fantastical environment that draws you in and grips you from beginning to end. Hobbits chase fireflies along the aisles; screeching, leather-clad orcs not only leap and somersault, on springed shoes, across the stage’s multiple revolving levels, but, startlingly, loom over unwary spectators. Frodo puts on the ring and vanishes before your eyes. Huge black riders and a hideously hairy giant spider, conjured through adroit puppetry and brilliantly lit by Paul Pyant, become creatures of genuine terror.

But there’s more here than spectacle. The music, by the Indian composer A.R. Rahman and the Finnish folk group V�rttin� with Christopher Nightingale, airy and earthy by turns, carries and intensifies the story’s swell of feeling. Themes of friendship, of the destruction of innocence and a world divided by race and belief emerge powerfully. The bond between James Loye’s courageous Frodo and Peter Howe’s loyal Sam is warmly affecting. Malcolm Storry’s compelling Gandalf blends otherworldly wisdom with patriarchal concern, and Laura Michelle Kelly as Galadriel, a sweet-voiced golden vision who descends in a skein of silk, is both ethereally lovely and magisterial. When Rosalie Craig as Arwen bids farewell to J�rà´me Pradon’s sexily charismatic Aragorn, you glimpse the timeless agony of women down the ages sending their men off to war.

Most memorable of all is Michael Therriault’s riveting Gollum, muttering, growling, slithering, crawling and darting, part insect, part reptile. Listening to Frodo and Sam comforting each other with an old fireside song, he is torn between longing, hateful resentment and flickering affection; Therriault’s evocation of a mind and body tormented and divided is extraordinary.

Peter Darling’s choreography thrills, from a rousing tavern song to welters of warring orcs to an aerial elfin ballet; and though Warchus keeps the stage constantly bustling there is not a note sung, not a movement or an effect that doesn’t serve the story.

The battle scenes still struggle to create a sufficient sense of scale; and the inevitable telescoping of Tolkien’s dense material can be disorientating. But snobbery and cynicism be damned: this show is a wonder. Go with an open mind, an open heart, and wide-open eyes, and prepare for enchantment.

Ook Michael Billington voor The Guardian geeft **** :

I suppose there are two ways to approach this mega-musical: either as a paid-up Tolkien aficionado or as a wide-eyed newcomer. Having dipped only briefly into the original trilogy and the Peter Jackson movies, I entered Drury Lane as innocent as any hairy-toed hobbit. I emerged three and a quarter hours later sceptical as to the main matter but hugely impressed by the manner of Matthew Warchus’s production.
Obviously Shaun McKenna and Warchus, as co-authors, faced a huge task in boiling down a 1,000-page fantasy into a theatrical narrative. But, although bits of the backstory remain obscure, the main thrust is clear. Frodo Baggins, a junior hobbit, and his chums are deputed by the wizard Gandalf to undertake an epic journey to Mount Doom to dispose of the evil Ring. In the course of their quest they acquire the company of elves, dwarves and rangers. They encounter sinister black riders and orcs, pass through Rivendell and the Golden Wood and ultimately do battle with the forces of the Dark Lord, Sauron. Finally, however, they get rid of the damned Ring.

CS Lewis, who knew about these things, claimed Tolkien created a complete world with “insolent prodigality”. Strip the story down to its essentials, however, and it seems strangely derivative. The idea of an all-powerful Ring, not to mention the shattered sword that is part of the story, is pure Wagner. The paradisal Rivendell is straight out of Morte d’Arthur and even the villainous wizard, Saruman, has echoes of Malory’s Modred. Behind the tale also lurks a pre-Raphaelite nostalgia for a lost, pastoral England: when the hobbits return to the Shire to find “great looming factories” and smoke-belching chimneys, they sound just like William Morris.

But, although I find it difficult to buy into the Tolkien myth, I happily pay tribute to the skills of Warchus and his production team. For all the technology on display in a £12.5m musical, they avoid presenting us with a heartless industrialised spectacle. Rob Howell’s imaginative design transforms the whole theatre into a bosky undergrowth. The barrier between stage and audience is constantly broken down. As we enter, jolly hobbits are chasing fireflies through the stalls. And, in a chilling entr’acte, sinister orcs eerily move amongst us.

The special effects, overseen by Gregory Meeh, are also special. The specific properties of theatre are used to create an alternative world. The black riders, who pursue Frodo and his gang, gallop apace on stilts like satanic furies. Paul Kieve, as head illusionist, magically makes Bilbo Baggins disappear. Best of all is the giant spider, Shelob, which creeps up on Frodo with legs the size of towering arches: only gradually do you notice the operatives underneath. Even if Howell has divided the revolving stage into a network of rising and falling platforms, you are always conscious of the human agency that makes things possible.

The music also never, or hardly ever, impedes the narrative flow. AR Rahman, the Finnish group Varttina and Christopher Nightingale have joined forces to produce a score that has two dominant elements: hearty, rustic numbers for the hobbits and romantic ballads to express the love of the elvish Arwen for the chief ranger and the yearnings of the mystical Galadriel, Lady of Lothlorien. Even if I jibbed at the blandness of some lyrics the music fulfils its basic function of reinforcing atmosphere. Laura Michelle Kelly’s glittering Galadriel also struck me as more engaging company than her recent bossyboots Mary Poppins.

On the whole, however, it is not a show for connoisseurs of acting. As in the movie, the most striking performances come from actors who lend a Shakespearean resonance to essentially emblematic figures: most especially Malcolm Storry as Gandalf, Brian Protheroe as Saruman and Andrew Jarvis as an Elrond whose kingly voice resonates like thunder. Even Michael Therriault’s Gollum is like an unearthly mix of Ariel and Caliban and James Loye’s Frodo has odd echoes of his Regent’s Park Cloten.

Did the show convert me to Tolkien’s world? Absolutely not. You won’t find me sporting T-shirts, like some hippy-dippy American students, proclaiming “Gandalf for President”. And I shall be quite happy to avoid, in future, the manufactured myth of Middle Earth. But I had a perfectly good time at Drury Lane and, if Tolkien’s trilogy is to be a stage spectacle, I don’t see how it could be better done.

Kieron Quirke van The Evening Standard had geen magische avond en geeft een lullige * :

People said it couldn’t be done - and they were right.

The attempt to condense the 20th century’s most popular epic into three hours has resulted in an empty-headed and messy extravaganza that will appal established fans and baffle newcomers.

Neither musical nor play, The Lord of the Rings feels most of all like a theme park stage show, or an extended interlude from the Eurovision Song Contest. The technical and human resources on display are staggering. As Frodo makes his familiar journey from Shire to Mordor, the stage is in almost permanent revolution.

Platforms rise and fall. Orcs and Uruk-hai (Third Age Orcs resistant to sunlight) thunder around on prosthetic limbs. Massive and rather frightening puppets (Black Riders and one helluva spider) loom over the stage.

Yet as many times as our minds form the question “How did they do that?” the question “Why did they do that?” follows. The spectacular action sequences - which pack the stage with perfectly drilled movement - don’t so much serve the story as take their inspiration from it. Generic aggressive dancing equals a battle. Running about the stage equals flight. Greater detail is rarely provided.

Without knowing the plot in advance, noone could fully understand what is going on. Worse, on the few occasions when the special effects coincide with specific dramatic incidents, they are disappointing.

Gandalf ‘s duel with a papery Balrog ends the first half on a whimper. Shelob (the spider) is great to look at but dies terribly easily. More depressing still is the human drama. There’s precious little. The novel’s large-scale narrative has been viciously trimmed, leaving hardly any room for character development.

The gaps between action sequences are a space for songs (few and unmemorable, with vapid lyrics), and for crow-barring in explanations of what has gone before.

Under time pressure, famous scenes go by as if the actors are anxious to get out of the way of the stage machinery. Malcolm Storry, perhaps wary of Sir Ian McKellen’s shadow, plays Gandalf as a nervous public school teacher, prone to fits of temper when crossed. You’d follow him to the Natural History Museum, but not so willingly into hell.

As Aragorn, Jerome Pradon gets about nine lines in which to fall in love and discover his destiny, yet still fails to deliver them in a consistent accent.

The hobbits come off better. They get a few refreshing jokes, a great dance number and, once Frodo, Sam and Gollum strike out on their own, deliver the only scenes of genuine human interaction. A song of home life is properly affecting, and Michael Therriault’s jittery, physical performance as the schizophrenic Gollum, is the best of the night.

The draw of spectacle and of its franchise may yet make this show a hit. It would be difficult to begrudge the hard-working dancers and ingenious designers that success. But you can’t fill three hours with setpieces, and this remains a folly, ill-fated at conception, tedious and vulgar in execution. To watch it is to hear money poured down the drain.

Mark Shenton voor theatre.com:

“The third age of Middle Earth is over”, a voice-over narrator solemnly intones at the end of the stage version of The Lord of the Rings, originally premiered in Toronto last year and now re-opened at London’s Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in a newly revised, clarified and somewhat shorter version. It may also mark the end of the age of gigantism in the theatre: shows don’t get much bigger, bolder or more ambitious than this, so why try to top it? But why, too, try to do it in the first place–surely attempting to distil some 1,200 pages of an adventure fantasy novel and hoping to re-make it as one fantastic piece of music theatre was always going to be a tall order? Does aiming so high mean that it has further to fall?

There’s certainly been nothing quite like it before. I saw it at its Toronto premiere last year, and was impressed then by its amazing stagecraft as well as its epic sweep, even if its overall tone wasn’t always easy to pin down. The creators at the time denied they were producing a musical, but instead were aiming for a theatricalisation of the story that used some of the conventions of a musical.

It’s true that there are still some problems with the structure. An inevitable surfeit of exposition, especially in the first act, is difficult to keep up with, and the removal of the second interval (replaced by a weird pause in which the auditorium is invaded instead by an army of Orcs) leads now to a jarring transition into the third act, but the show is more of a piece now. With the luxury arrival of solid musical theatre talents like Laura Michelle Kelly as Galadriel–whose glittering entrance by elevated harness could, admittedly, come straight out of a Sarah Brightman concert–and Jerome Pradon as Strider, it both feels and plays more like a conventional musical than before.

With a score by Indian composer A.R. Rahman and Finnish New Age pop group Varttina that delivers a frequently surprising and refreshing combination of folk melody, belting ballads and filmic underscoring, cleverly stitched together by Christopher Nightingale to seamless effect, there’s delight as well as danger here, in a search to do for J.R.R. Tolkien what Les Miserables did for Victor Hugo.

As with Les Miserables, director Matthew Warchus and his brilliant designer Rob Howell keep the narrative turning and churning with a magnificent and often startling series of stage pictures. Their sense of control of the story (co-authored by Warchus with Shaun McKenna) and their creation of a wholly inhabited alternative universe is thrilling. As its massive pageant of character and confrontation between good and evil evolves across the three-and-a-quarter hour evening–down from nearly four in Toronto, though an extra interval there means that they’ve probably only shaved about 30 minutes from it overall–it is still long, but never dull.

As I found in Toronto, there is, of course, an awful lot of plot to get in. The programme provides a detailed two-page synopsis, but even with its help you may find yourself floundering for the precise meaning of particular events from time to time. Then again, many felt the same about the Oscar-winning film trilogy, too. Even if the detail may be sometimes murky for non-Tolkienites, the general shape and sweep is clear, as hobbit Frodo Baggins sets out on a quest to return a gold ring with dark powers to the place where it was forged and destroy it there, before it is reclaimed by the forces of Sauron who could use it to control the fate of Middle Earth.

Somewhere lurking inside here could be an allegorical tale of our own battles with the dark forces of terrorism in the Middle East, but The Lord of the Rings fortunately confines itself to its own distinctive world. As animated by designer Rob Howell in breathtaking scenic transformations that are summonsed from a revolving series of independently moving platforms, and lit with a sculptural intensity by Paul Pyant, it once again, as in Toronto, exerts its own magic as well as recreating Tolkien’s.

While the set should take a bow of its own, and there’s impressive illusion and effects from Paul Kieve too, the human contribution also dazzles; especially the astonishing Canadian classical actor Michael Therriault, who invests an extraordinarily agile physicality to Gollum. Also impressive are the diminutive quartet of Hobbits, James Loye as Frodo, Peter Howe as Sam, Owen Sharpe as Pippin and Richard Henders as Merry. Between them, they go on a big journey — and take the audience with them all the way.

Ook slechts * van Michael Coveney voor whatsonstage.com:

“Shakespeare meets Cirque du Soleil” is how director Matthew Warchus has summed up this outstandingly incompetent adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s fantastical saga, casting considerable slurs on both parties. When it was premiered in Toronto last March, the show met with accusations of an over-long running time, incomprehensibility and tedium. Only the first of these faults has been rectified.

It’s slightly disingenuous of the production team to claim that this stage version of The Lord of the Rings was on the starting blocks before the first film, which appeared in 2001. For the Frodo Baggins of James Loye has exactly the same apple-cheeked demeanour as Elijah Wood without the charm; Malcolm Storry’s Biblical, grey-garbed Gandalf has the same exterior gravity as Ian McKellen, without the twinkle; and the Orcs have the same skull-like heads and scaly costumes as their movie cousins, though we can’t see that until they irritatingly invade the auditorium in the short second intermission.

Most outrageously, the score by A R Rahman, the Finnish folk group Varttina and musical supervisor Christopher Nightingale has the same folksy, ethereal aspirations of Howard Shore’s magnificent cinematic compositions, without an iota of comparable effectiveness or emotional clout. When Laura Michelle Kelly sings lustily in golden chain mail as the elvish Lady of Lothlorien, you cannot understand a syllable and immediately pine for Cate Blanchett’s transfigured apparition on celluloid advising Frodo that “even the smallest person can change the course of the future.”

Instead of the Fellowship coming together after their various adventures to save Middle Earth from the combined forces of wicked wizard Saruman (anonymously played by Brian Protheroe), we just have one damned thing after another with no coherence and no narrative rhyme or reason. There goes a black rider on stilts, here comes a bunch of tree-like Ents on even bigger stilts. The Orcs have arm-stilts, rather like Antony Sher’s scarab-style Richard III. To say the show was completely stilted would be an understatement.

Rob Howell’s design plasters the interior of the theatre with a tangled forest but has no recipe for flying pterodactyls, giant elephants or the sheer excitement of the battle on the plains before Mordor.

Viggo Mortensen and Orlando Bloom are simply magnificent in the movie as the avenging soldiers, Aragorn and Legolas; Jerome Pradon and Michael Rouse are tame cyphers. And Michael Therriault’s slimy Gollum is so busy contorting his limbs into a frenzy that he forgets entirely to suggest the character’s struggle with his inner demon.

There are a few good meteorological effects, and Paul Pyant’s lighting creates some great architectural shapes. Frodo’s trial in the giant spider’s lair is the best of the encounters, but it doesn’t supply anything in his separation from best mate Sam (Peter Howe); the movie, irresistibly, is as much about the fight for friendship as the fight for freedom.

Here, an audience is invited to share in a fight to solve a series of staging problems. And one can only have one of two responses: why did they bother? Or, back to the drawing board.

Charles Spencer ‘was not amused’ en laat dit ook duidelijk merken in zijn recensie voor de Telegraph:

The tale will oft be told of the plucky little hobbits, stubborn as bindweed and tough as old briar, and the doomed attempt of the fellowship of the ring to conquer middle West End. For it is a story of reckless courage and megalomaniacal hubris, and of throwing more good money after bad than seems entirely sane.

The first chapter was written in Toronto in the spring of 2006, where this £12.5 million leviathan of a musical had its first theatrical outing. The vile orcs, otherwise known as visiting drama critics, gave it a vigorous drubbing (the present writer included) while even the local press pronounced itself bored of the Rings.

The show failed to sell out, closed early, and in a rational world that would have been that.
However, the producer Kevin Wallace and the director Matthew Warchus, corrupted perhaps by the malign power of their “precious” ring, insisted they would bring the show to London. And now, in a shorter though not noticeably more lucid version, it opened last night at Drury Lane.

I’m sorry to report that it remains a thumping great flop. I took my 14-year-old son along, who enjoyed Peter Jackson’s epic Lord of the Rings films and is, I would guess, exactly the age and sex this show needs to attract in order to survive.

Unfortunately he hated it even more than I did, sitting with his head in his hands in those moments when he wasn’t tittering at the ponderous inanities of the scriptand the triteness of the lyrics.

Indeed his reaction was only marginally milder than that of Tolkien’s fellow “Inkling” Hugo Dyson who, when required to listen to yet another chunk of the novel in progress was heard to groan: “Oh no! Not another f***ing elf.”

Warchus’s claim that the show is a cross between Shakespeare and Cirque du Soleil is risible. The language is flat, portentous or twee, and there is barely a moment that makes you gasp.

Indeed most of the special effects seem highly derivative, from old-hat bungee jumping to the Louise Bourgeois inspired giant spider. Nor does this story of epic battles run to a single decent sword-fight, a truly astonishing omission.

Peter Darling’s choreography, involving a great deal of tiresome mannered hand-jiving isn’t a patch on his work in Billy Elliot apart from one lively tavern scene. And the stage, which revolves and rises and falls in 17 different sections, may be complex but is far from spectacular.

Repeatedly during this show you feel its creators have more money than either sense or imagination.

The score, by the Indian film composer AR Rahman, the Finnish group Và¤rttinठand musical supervisor Christopher Nightingale is an endearingly trippy mix of folk rock and Eastern mysticism, but fatally lacks a killer melody that lodges itself in the memory.

The book, by Warchus himself and Shaun McKenna, will I suspect be incomprehensible to anyone who doesn’t already know the story, and the attempts at humour - “May the hair on your toes never fall out” - are so cute you feel faintly sick.

Their English lyrics meanwhile are bland to the point of stupefaction, though perhaps those in Elvish are a riot of wit and sophistication.

It doesn’t help that Tolkien’s characters have so little personality. Malcolm Storry’s charmless Gandalf entirely lacks the required twinkle, Brian Protheroe could hardly be less scary as the evil Saruman, and all the lovely Laura Michelle Kelly has to do is warble in mid-air as Galadriel.

Only Michael Therriault’s charismatically creepy and athletic Gollum, and James Loye and Peter Howe who make a touching double act as Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee, come to persuasive life.

These last three are survivors of the original Canadian production. Full marks for loyalty but few for judgment, for they have wasted their time and talent on a show that combines tiresome grandiosity with mind-rotting mediocrity. Its run, I fear, will be nasty, brutish and short.

Of te wel: uiteenlopende reacties.

Ik heb nog niet alles uitgebreid gelezen, maar kan me het achterliggend idee wel voorstellen: of je vindt het geweldig, of je vindt het niks.
Ik had ook een mooie avond muzikaal theater, maar echt beklijven doet het niet. Behalve dan Gollum: die was werkelijk briljant.

Op de site staan een aantal nieuwe videos en audio uit de Londense produktie http://www.lotr.com

Die uiteenlopende recensies waren wel te verwachten natuurlijk, maar ‘men’ is in ieder geval positiever dan over de Toronto versie vorig jaar.

Probleem is een beetje dat de negatieve wel ERG negatief zijn. Gek genoeg zijn de serieuze kranten het positiefst (The Times en the Guardian zijn, zeker in vergelijking met de rest van de Britse krantenwereld heel “high-brow” als het op kunst aankomt). Maar of je als producent van een blockbuster nou het meest blij mee bent? Ik betwijfel het. Ik ben erg benieuwd naar de discussie op Late Late review aanstaande vrijdag om 0.00 uur op BBC2. A musical in trouble….AGAIN…..

Jaccozoveel - 20 June 2007 09:24 PM

Gek genoeg zijn de serieuze kranten het positiefst (...). Maar of je als producent van een blockbuster nou het meest blij mee bent?

Dat zie ik even niet: lijkt me juist fijn als een kwaliteitskrant je het het hoogst beoordeeld. Dat is tenminste serieus te nemen.
(vergelijk een tabloid: ik vond het een mooie show. de kleur roze kwam er in voor. precies zo roze als de jurk van Manuela Kemp toen ze over de loper liep.)
Kun je het nader uitleggen?

De fimppjes op de site zien er veel belovend uit en heeft mij besloten zeker deze show bij mijn 1ste volgende bezoek aan Londen te gaan bezoeken. Als is het alleen maar voor het decor!

weet iemand of/waneer er een CD van komt?

jouke - 21 June 2007 08:32 PM

De fimppjes op de site zien er veel belovend uit en heeft mij besloten zeker deze show bij mijn 1ste bezoek aan Londen te gaan bezoeken. Als is het alleen maar voor het dekor!

Als je binnenkomt alleen al: ik kwam de zaal in, mij werd plaatsgewezen door een meisje en ik heb dat hele meisje niet meer gezien, want ik stond gelijk een kind zo blij mij met open mond te vergapen aan de vuurvliegvangende hobbits met schepnetjes: onder het nog net niet kirren van “Owh!!”

Ik ben afgelopen vrijdag geweest en inderdaad , wat een show zeg !!
Ik zal niet teveel verklappen , het leukte is om het maar te laten gebeuren.
De Hobbits voor het begint zijn inderdaag erg leuk ! Een tip : kom dus op tijd , dan mis je het niet.
Hoogtepunten voor mij : De bomen , Het gevecht met de Balrog en Michael Therriault als Gollum.
Minpuntje : te weinig echte musical zodat je maar weinig zang hoort van bv Jerome Pradon en Laura Michelle Kelly , 2 geweldige musical acteurs.

schuurbeest - 09 July 2007 11:49 AM

Minpuntje : te weinig echte musical zodat je maar weinig zang hoort van bv Jerome Pradon en Laura Michelle Kelly , 2 geweldige musical acteurs.

Ik hoorde al zoiets.  Laura Michelle Kelly heeft nog een redelijk spotlight moment, maar Jerome zing in ongeveer anderhalf nummer?

Als alles goed gaat (lees: Seetickets verstuurt ein-de-lijk de kaarten) ga ik in augustus een kijkje nemen.

Skye.

Ja klopt. Ik ging een beetje voor Jerome ook dus dat was wel een minpuntje.
Voor de rest een geweldige show en zeker de moeite waard deze te gaan zien.