My lovely wife got tickets for the Lord of the Rings Musical in Toronto for my birthday, and we went this Thursday. It was a month later than it was supposed to be, because they cancelled the first two nights, and tacked a comple on at the end because of ‘technical issues’. I’ve got some gripes, but overall the show was amazing.
First I’ll get the gripes out of the way…. When they called us to tell us that the opening of the show had been delayed, we had a couple options 1) get a full refund, 2) get different seats on a different night of the regular run 3) get the same seats at the first added performance. We chose option 3 since Jenn had managed to get seats in the center of row D – we were not going to get seats anywhere near as good if we switched. At the time, the person Jenn spoke to mentioned that he thought they would probably do something special on that night since everyone would know that it was an extra show and why it had been added.
We showed up at 6:30 (for a 7:00 show), and wound up milling around in the lobby for 20 minutes before we were able to get our seats. The show has been running for a month at this point, and having done a fair bit of theater myself, I expect that they were having a technical glitch of some sort that needed correcting. Regardless of reason, it didn’t start things off optimally.
The show was originally to have opened Thurs. Jan 26, but the rescheduled date meant we went on Thurs. Mar 2. We had booked a hotel for the night, arranged to have the Thursday and Friday off, and so forth. I wasn’t expecting free tickets or but their decision to delay the opening at the last minute caused us a fair amount of inconvienience. Given the price of the ticket ($100+), it would have seemed to me that a small gesture would have been appropriate, at the very least I would have expected at least a brief announcement to the effect of ‘we apologize for the rescheduling and want to thank you for coming’. Even nicer would have been a simple card with a souvenier – say one of their cheaper items like the pin. I know they sell it for $10, but their cost on is unlikely to be more than a couple dollars, which looked at as a percentage of the ticket cost is relatively minor. What did they do? Nothing.
Who knows, I might even have bought another souvenir at the gift shop if I hadn’t been feeling slightly pissed off. I’d have been feeling a whole lot more pissed off though if I hadn’t enjoyed the show.
All right, enough of the griping – on to the actual show.
If you didn’t like the movie version because of everything they left out, well, stay far, far away from the musical. It’s a three hour performance, plus two intermissions – no way can they even try to get everything into the show.
Overall, I loved the show. One of the things that concerned me before we saw the show was how they could pull off the big events – battles, Ents, Ring Wraiths, She, etc. They pulled it off with flying colors. I don’t want to say too much, because part of the fun (for me anyway) was being surprised by how they did it. I’ll just touch on various elements of the show.
Preshow: Hobbits were wandering around the stage during the preshow, interacting with the audience, and trying to catch fireflies (simple nicely done effect). I’m a big fan of this sort of setup. It gives the audience something to do while waiting for the show to start, and eases them into the show.
Casting: In some ways, it seemed like the closer the actor looked to the character in the movies, the more likely they were to get cast. It could have just been coincidence though. They managed to cast the high and low ends of height, and ignore the middle, with the result that the Hobbits were substantially shorter than everyone else. Merry was played by Dylan Roberts, someone I went to high school with (and a UWaterloo grad). I only had issues with one casting decision, which I’ll mention in the next section.
Act 1: Gandalf, especially in the first act grated on me. His speaking cadence was very strange, and he seemed to spew lines of dialogue without any thought as to what they meant. It is quite possible that this was a directorial decision, since there were points later in the show that this wasn’t the case. On top of that, he seemed a bit wimpy and lacking in presence to me. In any case, it made it hard for me to maintain my suspension of disbelief because it didn’t feel like he fit the role to me. The actor portraying Gandalf is Brent Carver. He has won numerous awards (including a Tony for best actor in a musical), and I’m not suggesting he is anything less than a fine actor. He just wasn’t what I imagine Gandalf to be.
The most memorable thing for me from this act was the Ring Wraiths. They were done with stilt walkers. The stilts became the front legs of the horse, and the ‘rider’ controlled the head of the horse.
The end of the Act 1 was Gandalf vs the Balrog – the first ‘big event’. Not the biggest effect they pulled off, but big enough to impressive, and bring the act to a close.
Act 2:There is a scene where they climb into the trees (to see Galadriel). The way they make it happen is amazing.
Rebecca Jackson Mendoza is Galadriel, Lady of Lothlorien. She has one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard. Definitely a highlight of the evening.
Gollum. Wow. Pretty much worth the price of admission just by himself. No CG, just body makeup. My only concern is for Michael Therriault’s (the actor) sanity if he plays the role for too long 
The Ents were less imposing than I might have liked, but I suspect they couldn’t do that without sacrificing height which would have been worse. The voicing of the Ents on the other hand was perfect.
Gandalf the White appears, and has more presence, and bothers me less – in this and the third act, I don’t find him disrupting my enjoyment of the show.
Frodo and Sam do a duet that is quite singable. As Gollum becomes treacherous, he sings a portion of the song with malevolence. I was expecting there to be a reprise of the song at the end.
Act 3: She (the spider) is another of the ‘big events’ that I wondered if they could pull off. Once again, they came through in spades. She is a large as you could hope for, and the whole sequence is very well done.
The biggest thing about this act is the ending. It ends without any final song/production. I don’t understand this. It’s a musical, you have a ‘happy ending’ to work with, the bad guy(s) are defeated. You even have a song that would work fairly well as a closer from the second act. This is the single biggest thing I would want to change if I were looking at how to make the show better. Giving the audience something to be humming on the way out the door is just a better way to end things. As it was, it seemed a little odd.
A secondary thing was the order of people coming out – Gollum came out before Galdriel, and a bunch of other people. He got the most applause of anyone (deservedly). I can understand Frodo and Gandalf coming out after him, but Galadriel who only has one scene versus Gollum who is present through all three acts? It doesn’t make sense to me (and as you saw earlier, I thought Galadriel was amazing).
So, anyway, there you’ve got my thoughts on Lord of the Rings the Musical. One of the longest posts I’ve ever made I think. I’ve tried not to give too much away for anyone who wants to go see it.
The bottom line is, if you are thinking about going, I’d recommend it. You don’t need the best seats in the house, so much is on a big scale that being fiurther back won’t hurt and actually could help. They’ve also done a nice job of making sure that key events can be seen no matter where you are.
