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LOTR The Musical!
Blue Stone writes "The Lord of The Rings, is to become a musical, to be staged in London's West End, in 2005, on the book's 50th anniversary. The £8m (US$12m) production has lyrics by Shaun McKenna and music by Stephen Keeling and Bernd Stromberger, while Matthew Warchus will direct." If they can get Leonard Nimoy to sing the Bilbo Baggins song on
stage, I'd go ;)
...but I am severely not interested in this. LOTR the book is a verbose baroque mess (page upon page of overly flowery descriptions of nothing much).
The film is overhyped and not actually as good as everyone makes out. I can't see the musical making much difference, more it will just give an excuse for people to sing in elvish. Woo. Hold me back.
This has been posted anonymously because I really don't feel like taking the Karma burn from Tolkien Fanboys who won't bother to understand that, yes, I have read/seen them all and the above is a rational (and very bored) assessment of same.
Now THAT I would pay to see. The Reduced Shakespeare co make some damn funny work (The Bible: The complete word of God(abridged) being, IMHO, better than the complete works of the Bard)
:)
After all, the major complaint EVER about LOTR is that it is waaaaaay too long and has to much descriptive rubbish in it.
A RSC version may actually be watchable
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
Well... the first intro that I had to the world of hobbits was from a musical version of The Hobbit that I saw as a kid at a local community theatre that my friend was involved in. This sparked both my interest in theatre, and also my interest in the world of Tolkein. Following this performance, I went on to read all of the books, etc... Anyway, My biggest concern of this new musical is how the hell do you shrink it into a length that people will sit though. I fear this will be a mighty big challenge and that the results might not be so pretty... Time will tell I guess!
I hate to disappoint, there was no fight between Saruman and Gandalf, providing you meant Saruman with 'Sauroman' :) In case you meant Sauron, he never even got close to Gandalf. Read the book, man :)
:))
All the fight between Saruman and Gandalf happened at the end of second book with Gandalf standing outside Orthanc, while Saruman being inside. It consisted from one staff being broken and one palantir thrown
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
I'm not convinced by 'LOTR: The Musical', but I think some of the stories in the Silmarillion are very suitable for opera. For example, Beren & Luthien and a cut-down version of Turin Turamber. They are short stories with lots of drama & emotion and, of course, plenty of tragedy.
This would only make sense since an influence of LOTR was Wagner's opera Ring Cycle with a summary here . Both are based on Norse mythology and there are many similarities including both deal with the destruction of a powerful,cursed ring that everyone wants. The linked website lists some more similarities. The LOTR musical has the possibility of being good, but I doubt it will rival the original.
Anyone remember the 1976 animated Hobbit? As I remember from my youth, they had actually produced a decent number of songs with music set to the original lyrics for the songs/poems in the text. It was kind of a shame that they couldn't do the same for LoTR, and instead resorted to that horrid soundtrack.
Part of what made the Hobbit work was that the music conceivably corresponded to the "time period" of the story - a sort of renaissance style music in some cases. And the orcs had a downright thrilling chorus. Very well done. I can't really imagine a musical with a score along the lines of current broadway offerings. It certainly sounds bad to me.
Hm, seems like you misunderstood me, it's probably because of my bad english.
What I think I ment was (afterwards I don't remeber what my first reaction about the musical was): If you make money out of something, let's say a movie, I think that you should at least have written the story that the movie are based on yourself, using others creations and make money out of it feels not that good imho, especially when the writer of the LOTR books is dead. And the way the people who own the rights to LOTR are driving it makes me sick, first the movies, that's okay, then the game, which was just another way to earn more money and now the musical, do they only think about profit?
_IF_ JRR Tolkien was alive, and accepted all this crap they're making (toys, games etc) it would have been more OK, but far from good.
Ofcourse you could go see the musical just because you like it, but I think this media-created hysteria about LOTR is way to far gone.
note: I liked the movies a _lot_, and I like the books (I'm reading the book about bilbo, the one they haven't made a movie of, right now). So that's not the issue, what I don't like is the people in tie sitting on their fat asses only thinking about profit.
btw: who is Peter Jackson?
(comment posted by a 14 y/o swedish kid, that probably explains the lack of english skills)
About a third the comments seem to be "that's good," LOTR has music in it.
..."
No! This is the musical genre. Think Gilbert and Sulivan, Oklahoma and, at its most serious, Les Miserables.
Musical is not serious music. That is reserved for Opera. That is why you have people dying all over the place and 6 hour playing times for opera.
I know people have said, "LOTR has music in it. Now we'll hear it." Forget it. Think of the practical reasons against it. They'll be taking the 6 hour plot of the movie and chopping it down to two hours, music included. Chances are it will be the Cats treatment.
This is not to say it will be bad, but fans of the book are definitely not its intended audience. Fans of the movie are probably its intended audience.
The earlier posts were right. Simirilion and LOTR need opera. They're serious and deserve a serious genre.
Never mind. Forget that. I want to see Pippin get a girlfriend (musical comedy), Sauron (played by a baritone wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with a red eye) howl out an opening solo, and who could miss the Nazgul chorus?
Good heavens! The article mentions The Graduate as one of the songwriters' credits. "Here's to you Frodo Baggin's sir
Around Christmas of 2000, I went to go see a stage production of "The Hobbit" in London. It was one of the worst plays I've ever seen. I think their mistake was trying to portray the entire journey as literally as possible on the stage. The actors were running around like crazy, trying to keep up with the moving scenery and costume changes. As a result, most of their lines were shouted so you could hear them as they dashed from place to place. If I hadn't known the story well beforehand, I would've had no idea who the characters were, what they were doing, and why.
During intermission, I asked a couple of locals (I'm not from England) whether this was one of the "pantomime" plays I'd heard so much about. They laughed and said no, but it might as well be.
Having seen this bomb, I am skeptical that a quality stage version of LOTR can be done. The only way it's going to work is if they pick a part of the story to tell rather than the whole thing, and let the characters really shine through instead of being held hostage to the costumes and scenery.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
I must admit I'm not looking forward to this one... but what do I know? I saw a musical version of Plan Nine From Outer Space in Kansas City, and that was bloody brilliant. Had an actor hiding his face a la Bela Lugosi and everything.
No doubt it depends a great deal on context--and it probably has also evolved significantly over time. It's like the term 'geek'. Earlier in this century, a geek was "a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake."
Later the definition was expanded to include a more general class of social misfits, eventually coming to mean those socially awkward individuals with a strong intellectual bent.
Now, the name 'geek' has been claimed as almost a badge of honour for members of that misfit intellectual community. In some circles (I'm looking at you, gentle reader), there is no stigma attached to being considered a 'geek'. The term has been picked up by mainstream marketers (ie ThinkGeek) who probably see it as a valuable demographic.
~Idarubicin