Gandalf and friends head for West End
Gandalf and friends head for West End
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Friday, 23, Jun 2006 01:16
Good news for hobbits everywhere: a musical production of JRR Tolkien's The Lord of The Rings will be staged in London's West End next year.
The Theatre Royal will be the venue for the big budget production, which managed to pack the three-volume, 1,200 page epic work into only three and a half hours during its recent run in Toronto, Canada.
But following widespread criticism from theatre buffs the show's producer, Kevin Wallace, plans on cutting down its length and re-writing scenes to make the saga more understandable when it opens for its first night on June 19th, 2007.
Despite being described as "insufferably twee" by the Telegraph, a handful of positive British reviews of the show have boosted Wallace's expectations of a more welcoming reception from London audiences.
"It probably does have a European sensibility, a British sensibility, in terms of the use of text and the use of the spoken word," he said. "It's coming back to its spiritual home."
Following in the footsteps of the wildly successful The Producers, which shuts down in January to allow a four-month refit of the Theatre Royal, will be a big challenge for Wallace made even bigger by the enormous production values his show requires.
Its enormous budget, accommodating £25 million worth moving machinery, 500 pieces of armour and a bewildering array of technical showing-off, makes it a massive investment that, if the show flops, could make it a massive financial disaster.
But Wallace need not worry. With Gandalf on his side and the luck of the hobbits helping him out, how could his project possibly fail?