BORED OF THE RINGS
In The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo Baggins famously states to his nephew and adoptive heir, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
It’s also a dangerous business to adapt a well-known epic fantasy into a musical. There’s no knowing where you might be swept off to. And in the case of British director Paul Hart’s remounting of his 2006 The Lord of the Rings: A Musical Tale at Chicago Shakespeare Theater — which opened last Friday — I was swept off to a very artistically confused place.
As a lifelong Lord of the Rings fan, my expectations for this transformation were low (how anyone can adapt a 550,000+-word epic into a musical is beyond me; Les Misérables has about the same word count), but with Chicago Shakes behind the wheel, I expected excellent artistry at the very least. Unfortunately, even on that point I was disappointed.
Spencer Davis Milford and Cast
There’s so much to discuss here, I hardly know where to begin, but I think it’s wise to start with the music, considering that this was touted as a musical. In a musical, songs should happen for one of two reasons: the first is to forward the plot, and the second is because a character is so overcome with emotion that they have no choice but to burst into song. I don’t believe a single song in this show was motivated by either reason. The music team, A.R. Rahman, Värttinä, and Christopher Nightingale, instead used music to introduce new locations and characters. This approach makes sense for Rahman who is best-known for composing film scores, but that approach doesn’t translate into a musical. Every time a new musical number started, I found myself fighting to pay attention because I knew nothing important was going to happen for the next three to four minutes. Every song could have been cut, and we would not have lost a single plot point or moment of character development. Therefore, I don’t believe this was a musical, but rather, a play with music jammed in.
Spencer Davis Milford and Tom Amandes
I don’t want to totally disparage the music though. Värttinä’s Finnish folk style shone through in a beautiful way that felt reminiscent of some of the music in Peter Jackson’s film adaptations, but the musical only had one truly successful song: “Now and for Always.” This intimate folk song between Sam (Michael Kurowski) and Frodo (Spencer Davis Milford) melted my heart and showed a glimmer of what this musical could have been. In fact, the fifteen minutes or so around this song in Act II were far and away the best fifteen minutes of the piece. I have a theory that this section was written first and painstakingly revised to be shared as a proof of concept (I would love to know if I’m right or wrong). If I were an investor, I might have thrown some money at them to extend that magic to the whole story, but alas, they dropped the ball.
Instead of the reverent homage to the original story that I think it was trying to be, the final product shared with audiences on Navy Pier landed closer to a Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) adaption with a substantial budget, or a parody lovingly assembled by movie superfans.
Spencer Davis Milford
Closing out the topic of music, I must also comment on the choice to have the actors double as the musicians. I have seen this in many shows where it works wonderfully, but The Lord of the Rings was not one of them. I don’t think it made sense for these characters to have instruments. If this was set up as a story frame, wherein the hobbits are recounting Frodo and Sam’s epic journey, I could have seen the justification. But as it was, Sam ended up very seriously carrying a guitar through Mordor, while Pippin (Ben Mathew) lugged a cello through Fangorn forest. The production would have benefited from having a designated orchestra, which would allow for musicians and actors to specialize in their primary skills more.
Jeff Parker and Spencer Davis Milford (center) with Will James Jr., Ian Maryfield,
Eileen Doan, Michael Kurowski, Alina Jenine Taber, Ben Mathew,
Tom Amandes, Justin Albinder, and Matthew C. Yee
I must give a word of praise to the entire cast for their multi-talented performances, especially Kurowski who not only gave a standout performance as Sam, but also played excellent guitar and percussion. This production demanded a lot, asking actors to play multiple instruments, sometimes while dancing, always while acting and doing a variety of dialects. I commend casting director Bob Mason for finding as many accomplished actors as he did, but even with so much talent on stage, at least one aspect of several performances fell a bit short. Sometimes the acting suffered, and sometimes it was the music. Often it was the dialect — the hobbits, trying for what I think was a Midlands accent, kept slipping into Irish. Let’s not make the actors do literally everything.
Speaking of making the actors do literally everything, at times Hart’s directing felt absent. Through no fault of choreography and movement director Anjali Mehra, whose work was actually pretty strong (at least in the capable hands and feet of the ensemble), not only were actors left on their own to make choices with little to no editing from an outside eye, but the staging was problematic. There were a couple of scenes when most of the cast was on stage when main characters began speaking, but I couldn’t pick them out of the crowd. I could hear Sam asking Rosie to dance, but could I see them? Not even with Rosie’s absurdly brightly red wig. Other than a ridiculously unstable looking circle that lifted a few feet off the ground and ladders to a somewhat obstructed balcony (production design by Simon Kenny), the staging didn’t make much use of levels, leaving me searching for a focal point and often finding none.
Spencer Davis Milford and Lauren Zakrin
Much of the comedy in the show also left me scratching my head. This could have been a problem with the script by lyricists Shaun McKenna and Matthew Warchus, the direction, or the actors’ comedic timing, but I fear sometimes it was a combination of all three. It seemed like, left with very little direction, actors put playfulness ahead of sincerity to play up bits of whimsy that weren’t quite appropriate in tone. The humor in this show is one of the reasons I likened this production to TYA; it felt like it was playing to children, which was very odd in a story about life and death and the end of the world.
But then again, this adaption didn’t feel very life or death at all. It seems strange to say this about The Lord of the Rings, but there wasn’t much of an antagonist. The stakes felt absurdly low considering the story they were trying to tell. Where was Sauron, the primary antagonist who is determined to rule all of Middle-earth? He was hardly ever mentioned, and his all-seeing presence was certainly never felt. Saruman was as close as we got to an antagonist, but Jeff Parker’s portrayal gave us a bug that could be easily squashed rather than a formidable adversary. He was much better cast as the mighty Elf-ruler Elrond.
Ben Mathew, Michael Kurowski, Eileen Doan, and Spencer Davis Milford
What about the orcs, you say, Sauron’s goblin foot soldiers? Oh, you mean the biker figures in gas masks? Perhaps one of Mr. Kenny’s most baffling design choices was to costume the orcs in hoodies with skeletons painted on them and gas masks covering their faces. The first time they appeared on stage, I couldn’t even guess at what they were. Of course they were the orcs, but my brain didn’t want to believe that I was seeing a biker orc, so it refused to put the pieces together. However, the ensemble members under these masks did truly fantastic work. Their movement was articulate and specific both in this orc role and also as puppet operators for the Nazgûl, the wraiths who are Sauron’s servants.
Indeed, one of the highlights of this production was the puppetry designed by Charlie Tymms (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child). The Nazgûl were brilliantly designed as giant skeletal horse heads that snapped at the audience. I was pleasantly surprised as well to see the monstrous spider Shelob make an appearance, and she didn’t disappoint. If the rest of the production were as good as the puppetry, I would have thoroughly enjoyed it.
Spencer Davis Milford and Tony Bozzuto
Tony Bozzuto’s portrayal of Gollum was another highlight. I might recommend you suffer through Act 1 of this show just to see his skillful and hilarious portrayal of Gollum. If anyone struck the right balance between sincerity and humor in this show, it was Bozzuto. I believed him as Gollum and at the same time he made me laugh because, yes, Gollum sings his own — albeit still not plot-forwarding — song. What a treat.
Though I clearly cannot recommend you spend your time and money to see The Lord of the Rings: A Musical Tale, I do feel I witnessed something wholly unique. Nothing quite like this will ever be made again (hopefully), and if that makes you want to go see it, I recommend you grab a themed cocktail (the “Malört of the Rings” would be an appropriate choice since the experience is both unpleasant and an adventure) and prepare yourself for an evening of theatre unlike any other.
photos by Liz Lauren
The Lord of the Rings: A Musical Tale
Chicago Shakespeare Theater
a co-production with The Civic Theatre in Auckland, New Zealand
The Yard on Navy Pier, 800 E. Grand Ave.
Tues at 7; Wed at 1 & 7; Thurs & Fri at 7:00; Sat at 2 & 7; Sun at 2
ends on September 1, 2024
for tickets (starting at $41), call 312.595.5600 or visit Chicago Shakes
for more shows, visit Theatre in Chicago
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m gobsmacked reading this. I shouldn’t be surprised, though. I saw The Lord of the Rings musical here in Toronto in 2006 (a lifetime ago), when it was three and a half hours long (and there was something like 70 actors!). The production was theatricality on steroids, but the costumes were bizarre even back then. The book had serious problems, too. But it was indeed “theatre unlike any other.”
It transferred to the West End in 2007, and then closed in 2008 as one of the biggest commercial failures in West End history (at the time — with the rising cost of producing theatre, it’s bound to happen again … or has it?). I was hoping to see the announced 2015 revival, but it never happened.
I have a friend who saw a production that was immersive, kind of in a pub. Was Chicago Shakespeare’s also that way?
Hi Ralph, thanks for reading! Chicago Shakespeare’s production wasn’t immersive, though they seemed to halfway attempt some immersion. Actors entered and exited through the audience and there was a bit of a pre-show with audience interaction, but it didn’t feel immersive as a whole. Moments where actors were in the audience felt pretty unnatural.
The cast recording of the big-budget London recording is a snooze fest. Reducing the show only accentuates its mediocrity.