Were Critics Dazzled by The Lord of the Rings in Toronto?
Here is a sampling of what they had to say:
Mark Shenton in his Broadway.com Review: "Transferring Tolkien's massive adventure fantasy to the stage may have seemed an epic folly. But as cleverly if not necessarily always clearly distilled by director Matthew Warchus, who has also co-written the adaptation with Shaun McKenna, a constantly unfolding pageant of character and confrontations between good and evil evolves across one hurtling evening that, though admittedly long at close to four hours including two intermissions, is never dull... Like the fabled ring that can render its wearer invisible while giving him extraordinary powers, Warchus, too, is the invisible power broker who has seamlessly stitched together the collaborative efforts of a huge team into the common purpose to bring this story to thrilling stage life as a bold, spectacular piece of popular musical theater that delivers a knock-out visual and aural experience."
Ben Brantley of The New York Times: "An hour or so into what feels like eons of stage time, one wise, scared little hobbit manages to express the feelings of multitudes. 'This place is too dim and tree-ish for me,' mutters a round-ish, twee-ish creature named Pippin, groping through a shadowy forest in the second act of the very expensive, largely incomprehensible musical version of The Lord of the Rings... You speak not the half of it, O cherub-cheeked lad of Middle Earth. The production in which you exist so perilously is indeed a murky, labyrinthine wood from which no one emerges with head unmuddled, eyes unblurred or eardrums unrattled. Everyone and everything winds up lost in this $25 million adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's cult-inspiring trilogy of fantasy novels. That includes plot, character and the patience of most ordinary theatergoers."
Sam Marlowe of The London Times: "On the whole, it works, without resorting to the slick but soulless spectacle of Cirque du Soleil, or declining into Gothic cliché, a pitfall even Peter Jackson's celebrated films did not entirely succeed in avoiding. The stage version's great strength lies in the way its constituent parts combine in an organic whole… Rob Howell's designs, exquisitely lit by Paul Pyant, are achieved with uncluttered economy rather than hi-tech wizardry, and with an emphasis on natural textures and colours redolent of the story's Middle-earth setting. The score is a bewitching blend of smooth and jagged, lush and sparse."
Richard Ouzounian of The Toronto Star: "The problems with this version of The Lord of the Rings are so basic that you wonder how those involved with it could watch it coming together and still not see what was wrong. To begin with, it looks like no one ever decided what kind of show it was meant to be… There's a saccharine ballad between Arwen and Aragorn that's repeated endlessly, a lengthy dance number at the Prancing Pony Inn that stops the action dead in every sense of the word and a meandering new-age anthem for Galadriel to warble while dressed in disco finery. But when push comes to shove and the big emotional moments arrive, no one ever actually gets to sing… The script by Shaun McKenna and Warchus is also problematic. In its desire to compress three books into one evening, it sacrifices any kind of depth in the name of forward motion."
John Coulbourn of The Toronto Sun: "Designer Rob Howell has woven a warren of roots into a fabulous set... The same sense of lavish determination is also evident in Howell's costumes and Paul Pyant's often magical lighting design. This show is, in short, everything they've promised it would be. And somehow, just a little bit less. Because, finally, it all falls victim to its own hype. After promising the world a unique experience--something akin to an explosive theatrical union between Cirque du Soleil and Shakespeare--what they deliver instead is a rather well-behaved child of a union between J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lion King, with more than just a hint or two of Slava's Snowshow thrown in for good measure."
David Rooney of Variety: "It's gratifying to report that in its elaborate design and massive scale, The Lord of the Rings channels all that investment into an imposing, often impressive visual and aural spectacle. Too bad this respectful but somewhat arduous trudge through Middle-earth never summons comparable resources in the storytelling department… The mega-musical premiering in Toronto before a planned spring 2007 bow in London is an emotionally hollow behemoth intently focused on ticking off its storyboard checklist. It hurtles through 1,000 pages of plot soup without pausing to investigate the heart of the beloved tale or its multispecies characters."
John Mckay of The Canadian Press: "Clocking in at a hefty 3 1/2 hours with two brief intermissions, the epic fantasy is full of energy and wonder. Yes, plot and character development are compressed, but the production's sensory-stimulating sound and light show is easily the match of those digital effects that set the Peter Jackson motion picture versions apart. And it easily surpasses the dazzle that has become the trademark of Cirque du soleil performances. There isn't a weak link in all the elements - the sound, music, lighting, costumes. The acting can be stentorian at times but seems in keeping with the nature of the original dialogue."
Michael Kuchwara of The Associated Press: "The joy of the Rings trilogy is not only in its entrancing, heroic tales but in its staggering detail--an entire world--brought to life. But what finally appears in this earnest theatrical incarnation has been severely condensed and flattened, drained of much of the spirit, emotion and peculiarities that make the Tolkien novels so appealing to scholars and fantasy nerds alike. Despite the simplification, what's left is a confusing and long evening - more than 3 1/2 hours--of theater that occasionally erupts into moments of satisfying spectacle and elegant design."
Charles McNulty of The Los Angeles Times: "Neither a straight drama nor a traditional musical, the new production succeeds only as a dazzling spectacle. Even so, you'll need to bone up on the books just to follow what's going on, let alone enjoy the ride. Or better yet, get the DVDs, which for all their interminable length demonstrate how material as intractable as Tolkien's can be made dramatically addictive…. Pity the production can't be judged exclusively on its design--it would be roundly considered a hit."
Chris Jones of The Chicago Tribune: "Warchus has indeed created an eye-popping musical pageant on a set that attacks the Princess of Wales Theatre with endlessly flexible hills, dales, precipices and thick, thick foliage. To their great credit, Warchus and co-author Shaun McKenna have managed to stick this sprawling narrative on a stage without losing scale, dignity or coherence. Tolkien fans will love them for that. And it will be enough to avert this ambitious show from collapsing in an ocean of Canadian disappointment. But behold a paradox. Lord is now viable on stage because of the popularity of the movies. Yet even at this stunning budgetary level, theater can't compete with film unless it finds its own, distinctive language. That hasn't sufficiently happened here. And as a result, the iconography of the show isn't fresh enough. Yet, at least."
J. Kelly Nestruck of The Boston Globe: "The show's international creative team has created a stage epic that is surprisingly smart and visually stunning… While The Lord of the Rings leaves behind most Broadway musical conventions--though Saruman's send-off of the orcs to capture the hobbits does conjure up a certain Wicked Witch telling her monkeys to 'Fly, fly!'--Tolkien-heads will be pleased to know that the stage show hews very closely to the books, more so than Peter Jackson's movies, and leaves little out. Less reverent audience members will wish that more had been left behind, as the show stretches to 3 1/2 hours with two intermissions."
Tony Brown of The Cleveland Plain Dealer: "With a $23 million budget, a cast of 55, a 3-hour-and-45-minute run time and special effects raining down from the ceiling, the new musical version of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic trilogy is expensively, lengthily and unspectacularly dull, dull and dull. After all the money and months of rehearsals and previews leading up to Thursday night's media-blitz opening, the mega-enterprise smells of pipeweed smoke and funhouse mirrors…. Eleven composers take credit for the music A.R. Rahman, Christopher Nightingale and a nine-member folk band from Finland called Varttina. But there are hardly any songs. It's almost all underscoring and little of it as elegant as Howard Shore's film scores… It all plays more like a term paper than a play."
Martin F. Kohn of The Detroit Free Press: "For Detroiters, is it worth the 4 1/2 -hour drive and tickets that top out at $107U.S.? It is… Visually, LOTR is stunning… Musically, The Lord of the Rings is an improbable hybrid that works… The cast is vast--55 actors--and admirable."
Charles Spencer of The Telegraph: "There is nothing here to rival the imaginative visual coups and heart-tugging emotion of such great family shows as Billy Elliot, The Lion King and Mary Poppins. And though the musical score, by the Indian film composer AR Rahman, the Finnish group Värttinä and the show's musical supervisor Christopher Nightingale is an engaging mixture of folk rock, trippy-hippy mysticism and eastern chants, it doesn't, at least on first hearing, seem to offer any memorable take-home numbers… There's a 55-strong cast, but they are often under-employed… Peter Darling's folksy choreography isn't a patch on his dazzling work on Billy Elliot."
Kamal Al-Solaylee of The Globe and Mail: "[The Lord of the Rings] may boast of its record-breaking cost, but it still looks a lot like unfinished business. The blueprint for the adaptation--a heroic, if misguided, undertaking billed as a hybrid of drama, music and spectacle--is now in place. All it needs is an engaging storytelling approach, an emotional arc, credible performances and a more coherent musical score. In other words, what's missing from this adaptation is the essence of theatre itself as that divine place for sharing stories and forging emotional connections between the audience and the performers.