The Lord Of The Rings films were enjoyed by millions of people around the world. We, on the other hand, can’t think of anything worse than watching a film about little men walk across a mountain for hours.
But just because we can’t think of anything worse than the Lord Of The Rings film, it doesn’t mean that worse things don’t exist, as Canadian theatregoers are starting to discover. A group of evil-minded geniuses have devised something far, far worse than a Lord Of The Rings movie – a Lord Of The Rings stage musical. Yikes.
The Lord Of The Rings (DVDs) films have got a lot of terrible things to answer for, from the
Narnia film to the continued career of Sean Astin from The Goonies to
Peter Jackson thinking that making a three-hour film about a big monkey
is a good idea. But the worst thing to have come from the Lord Of The
Rings movies seems to be the recently opened Lord Of The Rings stage
musical. Imagine, all the draggingly ponderous bits of the film, broken
up by the characters singing about how they feel. Woo-hoo.
The Lord Of The Rings musical opened last night in Toronto – a feat
in itself, considering that it cost £13 million and uses 55 actors, a
40 ton computer-controlled floor, 17 lifts and almost four hours of the
audience’s precious life to get its point across. And you already know the point – someone you know almost definitely has the DVDs. And because the Lord
Of The Rings musical is in a theatre, it’s much harder to sneak out or
catch a quick nap than if you were just watching on telly round someone’s house.
Despite all the stagebound wizardry on show, the Lord Of The Rings musical isn’t going down especially well with the critics. We haven’t seen the Lord Of The Rings musical – oh good God no – but Charles Spencer from The Telegraph has, and this is what he thinks:
If you find a line like "As a hobbit might say, may the hair on your
toes never fall out" deliciously rib-tickling then this is undoubtedly
the show for you. If, like me, you find it insufferably twee, then you
are going to find the show a penance. And the narrative proves
worryingly hard to follow if you aren’t a fully paid-up member of the
Tolkien fan club.
The Lord Of The Rings musical gets its London debut later in the year. And we’re not going to see it. Now, an Underworld: Evolution stage musical on the other hand…
Read more:
It should come with an elf warning – Telegraph
[story by Stuart Heritage]