Put this somewhere else last night, thought i should make a fresh post
Well what to say, firstly before the play you look around the stage at all the
willow weaving in and out of the stage with a giant ring and a mesh screen
instead of a drape. Hobbits come onto the stage 1 to 2 at a time, makeup and
costumes were fantastic & well done. they interact with the audience, someone
from the audience wanted to know what he was smoking and the hobbitt smiled and
said longbottom leaf it was very good. they start trying to catch fireflies
while people take there seats and once the flies are all caught they are thrown
onto the ring and the play begins with the hobbits dancing.
the stage uses minimal props, a single round door and some willow for Bagend.
the stage rotates and rises and falls setting up alot of scenes like stairs,
helms deep and mount doom. i have never seen such a complicated stage, words
cannot do justice. scene starts out in the shire as said before, a little intro
about bilbo is set up and frodo meets up with gandalf.
what struck me about the musical, is that it is not a musical, it is not a
play, it is certainly a hybrid, and what me and my daughter saw may not be what
people see 1 week from today.
this could have easily been Springtime for Hitler if there was no dialogue, and
when i thought it would be not a good idea to sing in a certain point in the
play, they never did. the play was tastefully done and a good musical/play
adaptation of Tolkins work. the play is more like the book than the movie. the
scouring of the shire is in the play (thank god), if only for a few minutes.
our usher was great and told us some really cool stuff like David Bowie and
Brian May have been to the play already, the play started out about 5 hrs long
originally, now cut down to 3.5 hrs (which it did not feel like) & 2
intermissions.
my highlights were the prancing pony number, Weathertop, the bridge of kaza
doom, Lothlórien, helm's deep, shelob lair, mount doom and the black gate. the
star of this play/musical is the stage, sets and costumes, top notch everything
the nazgul/horse costume is a kind of lion kingish but 20 times more cooler. it
is a an amazing feat of design.
orcs were on some kind of euro pogo stick i've seen people use for jogging, and
those boys could jump flip, do amazing things, hats off to being fit.
the uriki used small cruches which made them very fast and gorilla like.
the ents kind of looked like hobo's on stilts with very long coats (my daughter
said that one), they could have used some leafs on the coats to make them more
like tree herders than tall homeless men.
most people had elevated shoes or small stilts to be a little higher than the
hobbits.
shelob was a massive willow branch puppet with 8 legs controlled by actors who
i quess were the character in 8 parts.
the bellrock was a massive paper face and with the help of 2 giant hollywood
fans made the bridge of kaza doom very cool.
for me Helms Deep kicked butt, all parts of the stage going up and down, 40
actors running around like crazy, i have never seen something more complicated
and special in my life. the entire set stopped due to a safety switch thrown
and all the actors got off stage whille the stage reset itself. better that
than some actor losing a leg or worse.
As for the characters, the main group of actors rocked. sam and frodo are the
main focus of the musical. I loved Saruman (Richard McMillan) and Gollum.
Gollum steals more than the ring, he steals the musical away from sam and
frodo. as i blithered on before Micheal Therriault who plays gollum now has 2
new fans me and my daughter, he was spectacular, a Tony performance? for sure.
Us canucks have Dora's and he should win that one anyway hands down. the man
must eat power bars between sets because he is always moving, crawling,
contorting. This is not a cheap Andy Serkis impression, this guy is a force all
his own. he will always get the loudest applause every night even though he is
not the main character, because when you see everyone else on stage you see
actors, when you see micheal onstage you simply see Gollum.
well i've been writing for about 2 hours now so i should shut up. if someone
was looking a more detailed review i found one at
http://www.electricpenguin.com/blatherings/archives/003685.html
debbie has done a good early review of the musical and i will say brent carver
as gandalf has done a really good job as that character and has made it very
believable.
you have to understand that since debbie went to the play, they have done a
major overhaul and i think what we saw was about 90% done, debbie saw it about
50% unfortunately and she should see it again to see the final product.
anyway hope you liked my rather scattered
review
