Possibly the most ornate musical to date, and certainly the most expensive show ever (currently $28 million Canadian dollars and rising), this version of the Tolkien trilogy, "The Lord of the Rings," is downright daunting. But it is more beautiful than the dark, mystical material might suggest, and the final effect is quite exhilarating. My fellow critics seemed a bit dazed, but the audience was ecstatic.
If you didn't grow up with these books and don't recall names and details from the blockbuster films, as I didn't and don't, it's a complicated thicket of peculiar "hobbit" and "elvish" names and language and fantasy to follow. And it does go on! I saw The Lord of the Rings four days before its official opening, and the enormous company (about 65 performers and 85 crew) were still struggling to get it down to its announced 3 1/2 hours (with intermissions and curtain calls, it ran 3 hours, 47 minutes).
I let myself just sink into all that stunning dancing, singing, sound, light and special effects and react as stoned flower children used to at rock concerts with light shows. It still needs some tightening and clarification, but the story is generally moving and likable. The more-than-hardworking cast is first rate, including at least four of my favorite Canadian actors. Add throbbing music, dazzling acrobatics, trick effects that bombard the audience with colored paper things at climactic moments, dozens of actors moving scarily in and out of multi-leveled set pieces on three turntables and 17 elevators, not to mention performers in bizarre costumes somersaulting high in the air and then landing on stilts, and you've got a drama that makes Cirque du Soleil look like static, plainly dressed peasants playing chess.
The people running the boards and calling what must be a thousand cues during the production should be having nervous breakdowns, though they have worked on the world premieres of shows like The Lion King and Ragtime. But I was happy to find a new, unbeatably impossible candidate for high schools and community theaters to try to produce.
There is a good deal of artistry lavished on this production. The multiple-award-winning designers, movement and musical directors, and special-effects creators are working at top form here. The whole theater is decorated, specially lit, and filled with riggings to fly the performers. National treasures A. R. Rahman of India and Finland's folk music group Varttina have created a few memorable songs and some thrilling anthem-like dramatic chorales to heighten the excitement.
Performing heavyweights Brent Carver as Gandalf, Richard McMillan as Saruman, and Rebecca Jackson Mendoza as Galadriel lend stature and authority to the drama and the music. Evan Buliung, a stalwart of Canada's great Stratford and Shaw Festivals, is splendid as ranger Strider, who becomes the heroic king Aragorn. And the relative newcomer James Loye, from Britain, does very well with the central role of Frodo.
But the most amazing performance in this huge, multi-talented cast is that of Michael Therriault, maybe the most gifted young actor developed at Stratford. He plays the loathsome, weird Gollum's shifts of "split personalities" with such intensity and such impossible-looking contortions and isolations of body parts that he wins applause at every exit. Therriault should have a chiropractor waiting in the wings.
Presumably the show will get tighter and clearer, but it couldn't get much more elaborate. Whether die-hard Tolkien fans will approve or not, this musical Lord of the Rings is a topper that will be a must-see, if only because it's unlikely to be outdone. But it may have to run for a decade for its producers to break even.
