On Another Note: Lord of the Rings? Not So Much
I normally attempt to keep my personal life out of my blog, but this time, I couldn't resist.
I am a theater geek. I love live theater. I go a lot. In a weekend in NYC, I can easily see four (sometimes five, if creative) plays on Broadway. I've done this many times. Can't tell you why I like live theater so much, but I just do.
Currently in Toronto for VSLive. In planning for this event, I noticed that a World Premiere production of a new musical named (for the obvious reasons) Lord the Rings would be playing during my visit. I knew that friend and co-speaker Paul D. Sheriff would also be in town for the conference (and he's read the eponymous books several times, most recently in the past few years), like theater as well, and might enjoy the experience.
So, last night we ventured out on a "man-date". Delicious dinner at N'awlins, near the theater. We should have stayed.
Turns out the show is 210 minutes long. That's 3 1/2 hours. That's very, very long. Two intermissions. Had I bothered to look at the tickets, I would have noticed that the show didn't start at the industry standard 8PM, but instead, at the "we have a really really long show here so let's start early" time of 7:30. We arrived at 7:29, to discover that the show started in one minute. Barely made it.
But what splendors we were privy to once we made it into the theater. Short people warbling offkey. Terrible, really really terrible acting. A script that at best was amateurish, at worst completely incomprehensible. Music all over the map, from chant to pop bellowing to Irish jig. Did I mention the acting? They carted in a professional "Broadway" actor (Brent Carver) to play Gandalf. Paul and I agreed: it seemed that he was so ready for someone, anyone, to relieve him from this torture that he wasn't even trying to act. He was, in fact, by far the worst actor in the show, and that's saying something. I expected, several times, to see him walk to the edge of the stage and shout "SAVE ME. PLEASE!" Contracts are contracts.
Let's be clear: The sets and the stage are amazing. They put ALL their money into these technical issues. Clearly very little went into the actors, the script, or the music. Several times Paul and I were both awed by the visuals.
And long. So long. Fifteen minutes into a twenty minute loud pop ballad about Lothlorien (in which the word "Lothlorien" was just about the only lyric), by a gold-faced singer with what appeared to be the business end of a sprouting potato on her head, I found myself rolling my eyes, and nearly shouting "OK, let's move this along."
Listen. You don't have to agree, but I find theater productions in which actors are completely interchangeable (that is, it was not only impossible to tell Pippin from Merry, as actors, and the direction is all about traffic management, not acting) to be skippable. "Beauty and the Beast" for example, fits into this "high school musical" category. LOTR takes this to extremes. Except for the gentleman who portrayed Gollum/Smeagle, any actor could have been any character. They might have switched parts during the show, and I wouldn't have known. The only distinguishing factor, as far as I could tell, was height.
Finally, the show is COMPLETELY INCOMPREHENSIBLE. I can't tell you how many times I found myself turning to Paul and whispering "WTF?" (spelled out, of course). The best (or worst) was at the end, when Frodo is trying to cast the Ring back into its source. Rather than bothering to stage a fight between Gollum and Frodo, or give the impression that Frodo was struggling, or anything at all, you saw Frodo standing above an area with red lighting, Gollum does something (not quite sure what), the lights black out, and it's over. Frodo and Sam are now lying on the stage, apparently tired. From something. Perhaps from surviving the previous 200 minutes of running around the stage. (And man, do they run around the stage a lot. In figure 8s, in circles, in straight lines. I was exhausted just watching.)
I'd go on, except that it doesn't serve a purpose. I've said enough. But amazingly, we both stayed awake (the first moment of the third act scared the heck out of us--took a few minutes off my life) and also amazingly, agreed that we enjoyed it. But it was a guilty pleasure. It's clearly just terrible. Bad acting, bad music, bad script, bad direction (think traffic cop). I pity anyone seeing this who hadn't read the books, or at least seen the movies. Are there such people who would pay over $100 to see this dreck?
If you must go, go warned. It's really bad. But fun bad.