'Lord of the Rings' at Drury Lane

This afternoon I went to see 'Lord of the Rings' at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. I wanted to see what they'd done to the book to turn it into a play with music and songs, especially after the films. I read the book for the first time when I was 16 and have a lot of emotional baggage associated with it. I didn't know what to expect from the play so it was a bit of a gamble.

Matinees are an interesting experience themselves - who goes to a matinee? Mainly old people and tourists it seems, and me. It's nice being served immediately at the bar for the mandatory diet coke and, for some reason, there's an exhibition of paintings by Ronnie Wood on the stairs and balconies. I walked into the theatre to find the stage infested with hobbits and some wandering round the seats in the stalls and the grand circle, chasing and catching fireflies (well, little lights, really). That kept going until the start of the play proper, which began with Bilbo's eleventy-one birthday party and where he vanishes. And he did just that, turned invisible. No idea how they did that, no sign of trapdoors or anything, he just vanished. Ooooo magik!

I won't repeat the story - you'll know it and if you don't why not and why are you reading this? When non-hobbit characters started appearing it was odd to notice that the hobbits weren't that small in comparison really. Some of the male actors wore platform boots to give them just that little bit more height, not really noticeable, and the women all (I think) seemed to wear big platforms hidden under their flowing dresses, only noticeable when they walked or bended. None of the actors really stood out as particularly good or bad, but the real star was the stage.

The stage was a big turntable that rotated and undulated at the drop of a hobbit. It was a marvel of engineering, bits raising and lowering to play the part of battlements, mountains, hills, bridges, you name an architectural feature and that stage could mimic it. Most impressive indeed (see the photo at the end for an indication of what it could do). There were also a few scenes when elves flew or floated with some nice wire-work. Orcs bounced round the stage on those 'leg extender' things that are becoming more common and Ents wandered round on huge stilts that made me feel vertiginous just watching. A nice set.

I felt a bit let down by the closing of the first act which should have been the big cliff-hanger of Gandalf fighting the Balrog in the mines of Moria. It was obviously going to be a big set piece, the wind machine starts blowing into the audience with some dry ice, 'leaves' fall from the ceiling to be blown into us and the music gets louder and wilder - great so far, but where is the light show? It cried out for some glorious pyrotechnics and we got a couple of fuzzy red spots. Or something. That could have been so much better.

Strangely enough, there was a second short interlude, the lights stayed down and it was only for a few minutes so I'm not sure what it was for. Just as hobbits invaded the theatre at the start of the play, now the orcs came into the audience to scare people. I kept my head down.

How on earth do you transform something with the broad scope of 'Lord of the Rings' into a two and half hour play? By choosing bits of the story to portray, ignoring others and merging characters and events. The bits chosen were all the more spectacular bits, as you'd expect, but it did seem like we were being moved from one set piece to another. I don't suppose there's anything they can do about that.

All in all, I enjoyed it. Nice special effects and some spectacular scenes. I wasn't keen on the speaking in Elvish - and especially not singing in Elvish which seems like a big cop out on writing good songs. I also got a bit irritated by the south west accents of the hobbits to signal they're a rural people (wonder what tourists make of that?) - they don't need accents. I can rise above the irritations.