Slashdot Mirror
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 ;)
Let's see them actually use some real height challenged people. Stupid camera tricks!
We're off to see the wizard.....
Fitting all six books into a reasonably long show will be hilarious. Think "Reduced Shakespeare Company". I'm all for it.
Lior
Papier Mache Balrog.
I think I'll pass.
...um...like...a sig...
"We will search far and wide to find our Frodo."
Send forth the Casting Nasgûl!
This guy.
No, no, awfully sorry that's not quite what were looking for, NEXT!
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
You'll never make a monkey out of me...
the fight between Sauroman and Gandalf would be dueling banjos. Hell, maybe they could even have an air guitar contest using their staffs.
Hey, it worked for the cartoon "The Hobbit" and "Return of the King".
An epic saga that is much akin to human growth, the adventure of youth and the burdon of responcibility over back drop of middle earth dragons and wizards is the perfect musical material, in the same sorta way that Les Miserables works. Les Mis sorta takes place in a romantised volitile time in French history, people vs the establishment, rocks and baracades. Not everyone's glass of tea, but it's something I enjoyed, even if it's a bit over the top. One thing that is considered a mark of good litature is something that can be enjoyed by all audiances... and The Lord of the Rings is something that can be read a child and read as an adult and still be enjoyed.
But to this day I still remember the edition of "Return of the King" cartoon, with the Orcs in Mordor chanting, "Where there's a whip, there's a way". While it was a sorta cheezy dumbed up cartoon, that is just classic.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
It's not that novel an idea. A few years ago the Finnish National Opera had a ballet version of The Hobbit for quite a while. Proof
This post is free (as in cheese in a mousetrap).
This is horrible. No, really horrible. Gouge-out-your-eyes and jam-hot-Q-tips-into-your-eardrums horrible.
I have these visions of Erik Estrada playing Aragorn and Bernadette Peters playing Aruwen and singing "Endless Love" while stagehands softly wave the fake plastic tree branches.
Once more, I'm left stunned that anyone can still believe in the existence of God.
They that would sacrifice their
> Is Troy McClure available?
:(
Sadly, no. Phil Hartman, who did Troy's voice, was shot to death by his wife in 1998.
Sentimentality is merely the Bank Holiday of cynicism.
- Oscar Wilde
Huge burning lidless paper-mache eye burns down west-end theater.
Sauron states he is pleased.
Reality has a notoriously liberal bias -- Stephen Colbert
This may be Ian McKellen's one shot to become a musical star. I can hear him now: "Woops, I did it again - I 0wn3riz3d the balrog!"
Sentimentality is merely the Bank Holiday of cynicism.
- Oscar Wilde
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!
for us to see the porno version. Sauron will "really" make the middle earth suffer...
Lord of the Rings has now officially jumped the shark - musical episode. Next expect to see Frodo's long-lost cousin Bodo and his hip new catchprase 'it's bodocious'!. They tell me that Will Smith will be making a guest appearance as Sauron's evil twin.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I feel that J.R.R. Tolkien is not rolling in his grave over this. It seems to go against what he or his family would have wanted to have done with his works. I thank Christopher Tolkien for editing a lot of his fathers works so that we can all learn more. Are there that many money problems in this family? I would have thought that Peter Jackson helped them out a bit.
Though I wouldn't mind hearing an opera in Ent that is about the Entwives.
If they can get Leonard Nimoy to sing the Bilbo Baggins song on stage, I'd go ;)
If they can get Leonard Nimoy to sing the Bilbo Baggins song on stage, I'd strangle him with my own severed wind pipe as I flood the assembly room in tears...
Bored with karma, be a fan/freak
There was a Lord of the Rings musical in Berlin around 1999, played in a circus tent. A couple of pix can be found on this website: http://www.bnoack.com/pict/herr-der-ringe.html
What a lot of people seem to be missing is the fact that the original books were very musical to begin with. There's scores of songs in there.
At Slashdot, I would've expected more people to know the books, rather than just the movies.
Several plans have been mooted but it is felt that creating some of the proper environments for a space based show (ie a vacuum) may be detrimental to the health of the audience. Promoters were concerned that killing the audience may harm ticket sales and impact mechandising and so are unlike ly to proceed.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
This is not such a bad idea -- it might actually work out. The Beatles considered doing a musical adaptation of the LOTR many years ago.
/ has more information (and proves that I'm no troll...)
As conceived, John Lennon would have played Gollum, Paul McCartney would have played Frodo, George Harrison would have played Gandalf, and Ringo Starr would have played Sam.
http://www.hellomagazine.com/2002/03/29/beatles
If well executed, a LOTR musical *could* be quite enjoyable.
posted the official home page. It can be found here
They're interesting in hiring, and apparantly the show will be staged only in 2005, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the trilogy..
|/________
|\A|ALYS|
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.
Check out the excellent symphony by Johan de Meij.
Here's an amateur performance of it.
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
http://www.thelordoftheringsmusical.com/
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)
What a sad day for Tolkien fans. This is a farce on the order of the Simpsons: "Stop this Planet Of the Apes I want to get off!" "I hate every ape I see, From Chimpan A to Chimpan Z, Now you finally made a monkey out of me."
"And I for one welcome our new insect overlords."
his would only make sense since an influence of LOTR was Wagner's opera Ring Cycle. Both are based on Norse mythology
Well, the latter part is certainly true -- they are based on the same myths. But according to a biography of Tolkien that I've read, he detested Wagner's works as a betrayal of the meaning of the legends.
http://www.ussjoshua.org/bbaggins.mov
my mirror (same file, zipped)
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Here ya all go
RING TIME FOR FRODO
Lyrics (C) 2001 by Terence Chua
(to the tune of "Springtime for Hitler" by Mel Brooks)
Middle Earth was having trouble
When we start our story
Sauron had awakened
To restore his former glory
So in Hobbiton
We looked there and found
The way to stop that evil sod
That wants to grind us down
And now it's
Ring time for Frodo and Company
We're setting out on the march
Journeying through perpetual gloom
Seeking to find the Cracks of Doom!
Ring time for Frodo and Company
Ring wraiths are hot on our tails
Ring time for Frodo and Company
Watch out Mordor, we're hitting the trail!
(spoken)
Just a word of sage advice - bashing Balrogs isn't nice!
Life in darkness can't be finer - when you are a Nazgul rider!
(cue dance number)
Ring time for Frodo and Company
(sound of bells ringing)
Questing's the best thing for fun
(sound of hoofbeats and clashing of swords)
Searching through dark and dusty tombs
(sound of screams falling into a dark abyss)
Finding our way through Khazad-dum!
Ring time for Frodo and Company
New friends to meet on our way
Ring time for Frodo and Company
And soon we'll be saving
We're gonna be saving
You know we'll be saving the day!
--------
Don't hurt me.
----------
Terence Chua khaos@tim.org
WWW: http://www.khaosworks.org
KhaOS@TinyTIM: telnet://yay.tim.org:5440
"The meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us will go to the stars."
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
The Lords of the Rhymes do a good Hobbit Gangsta Rap routine. Watch their video; I'm not kidding.
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
So, no one should be allowed to generate derivatives of Shakespeare? Or just that it should be verboten to sell tickets?? How about Dante's Inferno???
Are you a future member of the RIAA?? Seriously, the purpose of the "public domain" is to allow people other than the original creator to profit from performing or displaying "useful" entertaining works.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Who can burn the Shire, fill us all with fear?
Burn down all the villages and then pee in our beer?
The Saru-man can. Yes, the Saru-man can.
The Saru-man can 'cause he mixes it with mud and makes an army of orcs.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
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.
...with creating a musical from LOTR. How can you put a very dark and dire storyline to music?? Sure it will be very much like Opera, but my god. Its just... wrong...
- Jimbob
They turned the 5-part, 1200-page Les Miserables into a serious three hour show which many think is one of the best musicals ever.
a world in progress...
Me: "Honey, you know how you're always saying that I never take you to musicals?"
My wife: "Uh... yeah... I guess so..."
Me: "Well to show you how much I love you, I bought us two tickets to a musical tonight."
My wife: "You're so wonderful!"
Me: "OK. Instead of your normal evening attire, but on this cloak..."
MORTAR COMBAT!