So two weeks ago my Girlfriend and me drove down to London, well aqua planing would be more apt! to see The Lord Of The Rings Musical… Her sister had bought us tickets to see it along with her husband. We met up at Covent Garden Tube Station, had a wander and a spot of lunch before the performance. Covent Garden is an area of London I’ve never been to before, it was alright suppose. Anyway after a nice Pizza at one of the Many Italian restaurants in Covent Garden we made our way to Theatre Royal Drury Lane, to check out what the most expensive Musical ever put on was like.

Now before I go any further here.. let me make it blatantly obvious how I really feel about Musicals… I know hate is a strong word, but in this case it really is justified, I really do honestly proper HATE Musicals. They seriously do my head in, i just don’t see the point at all of all that singing, give me a good play any-day, but when people start having impromptu fully choreographed sing alongs in the middle of a good play, it really makes me feel like gouging my eyes out and putting them in my ears…. So just thought I had better let you know where I’m coming from when it comes to this subject My Fiancee on the other had Loves them and as this was her Birthday present, I thought I would show her how much I Love her and go along too….

Now The Lord of the Rings is perhaps my favorite book of all time, yes I’m a Fantasy nerd, so given this fact and the previously mentioned love of the Musical, perhaps not the best reviewer ;)The first thing that hits you are you enter the theatre at Drury Lane is WOW! No wonder this is the most expensive musical ever staged, the set is breathtaking, seriously cool, the curtain is a huge gold ring surrounded by intertwining branches that spread out to fill the whole area where the normal curtain should be and doesn’t stop there, the branches twine up and out covering almost all of the celling and both sides of the theatre, literally covering most of the boxes on the left and right. It really is a sight to behold, I tell thee. At the front of the stage you can see a small part of the circular stage sticking out.

So after a bit of time where the Hobbits mess about catching fireflies the show begins…I’m not going to tell you too much about the actual show, if you want to see it you should go and see it or get a DVD of it. What I did like about the show was the stage, the lighting, the sound and some of the acting was ok…The Stage was a huge circle, that looked like a cross section of a tree and throughout he show, spins and moves up and down with about twenty different moveable sections, it was really impressive and gave great depth to the performance. The lighting and projections were second to none and really added to the atmosphere of the show. The sound was strong and impressive. On the whole the acting was good, but some of the actors had weird accents.. but since seeing this show which I forgot to add was a pre-show before the official opening, we have found out that a good few of the actors were from the Canadian show hence the accents which at the time were strange, but understandable now.

Now the gripes…. Maybe I’m just too much of a Lord of the rings Snob, but they seriously have condensed so many parts of the trilogy, I found it quite irritating, at times it was almost like they were flying throughout the lines just to get to the the sing song bits… For me they just messed with the core story way too much… The Ents were odd but I admit, they are a hard undertaking especially when Peter Jackson did such a good job in the film. Shelob was good though and Gollum was also class! Well done indeed. The Elves were just weird, they couldn’t keep still, kept moving their bloody arms around all the time, I suppose in an attempt to look more mystical, to me it was just naff. Finally the Singing… just don’t get me started, I just don’t like Musical style singing and I never never will its crap.

So in conclusion, I have to say I think I’ve ended up not slating it as much as I thought I would, If it hadn’t been for the singing I think I would have been singing its praises. I think its worth seeing if you like musicals, or even if you not too fussed but like Lord of the Rings. But if you like me and don’t like Musicals I wouldn’t loose any sleep over not seeing it, Just treat yourself to a Lord of the rings day and watch the extended films back to back Bliss.

If you really want to see all the bloody singing.. then check it out here

Tags: Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Tolkien, Lord Of the Rings, Lord Of The Rings Musical, Drury Lane