Wednesday, May 07, 2008

JADM Day Seven - Greenwich, Lord of the Rings Musical

I well and truly indulged my inner dork today -- I managed to hit up a planetarium, a naval museum, and a Lord of the Rings musical in the same day. The only way it could have gotten worse was if I had dressed up for the musical, or written this blog post in Klingon. But I don't know Klingon, so we're all safe!

The day started in Greenwich, at the Royal Observatory, site of the Prime Meridian. I took the requisite photo of my feet astride the meridian, but didn't spend much time in the observatory itself; I got kind of a late start because I was exhausted, and I was more interested in the Maritime History Museum nearby. That museum was great -- if I write pirate romances someday, I'll have to come back and con them into letting me do actual research there, since they apparently have some fabulous documents in their library. They also have some really nice displays on the trans-Atlantic trading routes, the voyages of exploration, and some of Britain's naval battles -- mostly a lot about Admiral Nelson (who fought and died at Trafalgar, not at Trafalgar Square as the girl in Bath mentioned yesterday). They even had the uniform in which he was shot, with the bullethole clearly visible in the shoulder, and I was inordinately excited to see it.

I took a ferry up the Thames to get back to central London, and had a quick dinner before heading to the Royal Theatre in Drury Lane for the 'Lord of the Rings' musical. For what it's worth, I did *not* seek out the LOTR musical because it was LOTR -- the Royal Theatre was opened around 1812, and was quite popular at the time, so I wanted to see it. I won't deny that I was thrilled when I found out what was playing, though -- and the combination was great.

I really enjoyed the production. I can't say that I enjoyed the script or the story -- it was rather laughable how they had to script things to try to make any sense at all when cutting a 1000-page series down to a three-hour musical with a twenty-minute intermission. If you thought that the movies made some unacceptable cuts, you would be appalled by the musical. They cut out Rohan entirely (so no Eomer, no Eowyn, and no scene of Eowyn killing the Nazgul), but inexplicably turned Theoden into Denethor (Aragorn showed up to tell Denethor that Boromir was dead, then Denethor was cured and fought with them in the ensuing battle). Faramir was nowhere to be found, and Isengard, Helm's Deep, and Minas Tirith all seemed to be one place (and one battle). They solved the whole problem of how to get Frodo and Sam out of the volcano even more neatly than Tolkien did -- they dispensed with the eagles entirely, and just had Sam say 'let's go find our friends', and then they turned around and were at the coronation of Aragorn.

However, while the storyline was ridiculous (and if you hadn't read the books, would probably have been completely incomprehensible), the actual production itself was simply breathtaking. The Royal Theatre is quite tall, and they had vines stretching out from the stage across the first few private viewing boxes -- and they had quite a theme of including the audience in the play. At one point towards the end, some orcs appeared in the audience -- and since I had switched seats at intermission to have a better view, and was sitting quite alone several rows back in my section, I had the unsettling feeling of two different orcs breathing down my neck. And during Gandalf's encounter with the Balrog, which closed the Act One, a strong wind picked up in the theatre, blowing pieces of confetti into the crowd that looked like burning embers in the light.

But the most amazing things were: 1) the stage, 2) the suspension acts, and 3) the orcs. The stage was a huge set of four revolving, concentric circles. The middle two circles were cut into eight wedges each, while the outer ring and inner circle were whole. Each piece could rise or fall independently, and the rise was quite high -- I'm guessing thirty feet at least. The stage was constantly in motion to suggest mountains, stairs, travel, etc., and the coordination and planning that would have gone into making sure that everyone could dance and fight across a stage that was constantly switching levels was astonishing.

The suspension acts were also amazing. While not exactly on par with Cirque du Soleil, there were several segments (particularly involving elves) in which people were suspended and dancing in air. They spent a lot more time in Lothlorien than would have been expected, but the woman who played Galadriel had an amazing voice, and she did a great job of singing while entering by descending from the ceiling. Even though she, Arwen, and Elrond all did some weird hand gestures that looked like ninja sign language whenever they spoke, the use of suspension was quite good.

Finally, the orcs were v. impressive. They were much more acrobatic than I would have expected; they each carried two 'swords' that were attached to their arms like crutches, which they used to jump around and do flips and somersaults. Even better were the Uruk-hai -- they needed to be bigger than the other orcs, and they achieved this by wearing curved, springy stilts that allowed them to leap around rather menacingly. The coordination they required was even more impressive than the other cast members, since they were all twirling, flipping, cartwheeling, etc. as the floor levels changed by several feet at a time.

So while some parts were ridiculous (like Aragorn's makeup -- he inexplicably had linebacker paint under his eyes, or Boromir's death scene -- he went through such agonized death throes that I believe the Aragorn actor had to rock back and forth violently in 'grief' just to cover up the 'dead' Boromir's heavy breathing after all his exertions), most of it was fantastic -- the Balrog, the spider Shelob, the battle of Helms Deep/Minas Tirith, the later partial battle at the Black Gate, the musical segment in Lothlorien, the Black Riders (who were v. menacing, although they never showed up on wings), and even the hobbit dancing segment at the beginning were all technically magnificent. And I cried, quite unexpectedly, at the end, which is always a good sign, although I didn't have to blow my nose like the guy a couple of rows away from me.

Now that I've thoroughly bored you with a description of a musical you probably won't ever see (it's closing in London this summer, and there probably aren't a lot of stages that can accomodate the production elsewhere), and confirmed that I am beyond hope when it comes to being 'cool' or 'normal', I think it's time for bed!

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