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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 ;)
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'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.
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