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One-Man Lord of The Rings Comes to Chicago
nomadicpuma writes "In tandem with the return of the One-Man Star Wars Trilogy to Chicago (covered on Slashdot) is a new show giving the Lord of the Rings trilogy the same treatment. The One-Man Lord of the Rings, a performance of all three books by one actor in 60 minutes, will also be showing at the Apollo Theater through February 14, and by all indications looks to be similarly excellent."
I checked out the site, and this looks really cool!
What next? One-Man does the Geek Trilogy? (Matrix, Star Wars, LOTR)
Heh. That would rock. Wish I could go see this.
-WS
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
Ha ha!
Well, this has got to be a true role model for movie geeks out there. I remember in elementary school that reciting The Grinch Who Stole Christmas was impressive. I could actually recite the whole thing word for word at 10 years old. If he could do that for LOTR, that is, word for word. I'll be impressed.
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right. --Isaac Asimov
he perform 3 books that were about 9 hours on film in 60 minutes?
Let's see if we will also get the one man non-stop 10 hours extended director's cut with one actor..
turn MY mental illness into a crowd-pleasing source of income, I'd do it, too.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
When is the first web-site pointing out all the mistakes he makes going to appear? My guess is about 2 days after the first showing.
With all the geeks making one man shows, it seems that the next logical step will be the one-man premeir of "self-love:. Heck, there're probably enough "actors" for a simultaneous nation-wide release
Did this guy try really hard or does he have one of those brain defects that causes a person to cache ALL short term memory into long term memory (you never, ever forget anything).
Potential Reviews by the Pundits (apologies in advance): "His one man show is the one ring to rule them all!" "The acting dwarfs any other performance of LOTRs" "This one man does the work of elven!" "Mordor, She Wrote!" "His performance was so good, I could write an entire Gollum about it!"
"by all indications this looks to be similarly excellent"
Could someone point me to those indications? I don't see them anywhere.
Wow! This would have to be the least boring version yet!
Why is it that despite having unchecked LoTR stories in my preferences, I *still* see LoTR stories on the front page??
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I bet he leaves out Tom Bombadil too.
If its only one man, then who is going to carry Frodo?
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Law & Order Actor Fi Jerry Orbach was found dead in his New York City home this morning. Details are sketchy, but apparently his last wisecrack was something about his prostate and a dead body. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
Apparently that part contains some nudity.
Viewer discretion is advised.
You know he's gotta leave out Bombadil too.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Easy... just leave out every 9th word or so...
The end
How the hell does he do this? Does he talk like the micro machines man (ok, now I'm showing my age).
*yawn*
The One-Man Lord of the Rings, a performance of all three books by one actor in 60 minutes
Reminds me of the improv game "Countdown."
You have a scene, and you progressivly reduce the time for that scene. Usually it's something like 5 min, 2 min, etc. where each time it gets shorter and more frantic, all the way down to one second, where it's basically one actor saying a single word.
So, you have 9+ hours of movies condenced to one hour.
Then it's Lord of the Rings in 15 min.
Lord of the Rings in 5 min.
Lord of the Rings in 1 min.
Lord of the Rings in 30 s.
Lord of the Rings in 10 s.
And finally, Lord of the Rings in 1 second.
MY PRECIOUS!!!
that is a --; situation http://www.hammerrevolution.com
You see him grab a scrubbing brush and start feaverishly brushing a toilet.
You see, his version of the book had a typo. The "cleansing of the shite" scene was taken literally.
liqbase
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Though technically, it's a company and not just one dude, The Reduced Shakespeare Company is pretty good at this sort of thing, too. By all means, if you get a chance to see them, do so. All 37 plays in 97 minutes, not bad!
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
I'd kind of hoped this hideously dull fad was over. Gess it ain't over until the very last dime is milked from it.
Watch this post get modded down -1: Gollum by the Tolkein fanboys...
I've seen few things which suck as bad as this in my life.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
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The Tolkein/LoTR fanboys will mercilessly hammer any who try to "do" Tolkein/LoTR, and any who criticise those who "do" Tolkein/LoTR!
Just bizarre.
Definitely a personality disorder there, at the very least.
Tom was something I used to skip in the book anyway. What the hell did he was supposed to bring in anyway?
Does Han shoot first in this version?
From the smeagol-and-gollum-in-the-same-body dept
Err... they are in the same body anyway.
Colin
I'll be doing my 1 finger puppet rendition of War and Peace!
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
eh, i'm not losing any sleep over it. ;)
I firmly believe that Slashdot should have a category/icon just for Chicago based theater. Of course I'm biased, http://www.cicomedy.com/. By the way, I'm working on a one act comedy that is loosely based on C++ templates. Unfortunately, it is completely unfunny. A complete re-work is in progress. Stay tuned!
Give it ten years and we will all be able to do this. Then we shall welcome our new hologram allies
I like muppets.
I don't know why you'd want to see some loser play with himself on stage for an hour, but if that's the way you swing more power to you.
Anyway, I saw a performance of One Man Star Wars at the Victoria Fringe Festival in Victoria, BC, Canada. Its incredible. This guy also performed his One Man Lord of the Rings on another night, and it was just as good. The amount of energy he puts into these plays is amazing, and he's soaking with sweat by the end of the performance. He does a pretty good job with the voices, and his Gollum impression is great.
My girlfriend went to theatre school with him and we got to chatting with him after the OMSW performance, and apparently he was invited by Lucas to perform at some Star Wars convention somewhere in California in front of thousands; he was awed by the positive response.
So, before slagging him and commenting on how aweful it must be, perhaps you should STFU and STFP (see the f'n play). Anyway, if you are a fan of Star Wars I'm sure you'll get a kick out of this. I hadn't seen LotR as many times as SW, so I wasn't as familiar with the material, but I still enjoyed it. Go see it and make up your own minds.
I've seen this show twice, both at sold-out venues and both times to a standing ovation at the end -- it might sound a little bit silly at first glance, but the guy puts on a fantastic show with some truly funny moments. Plus, it's a great success story for the performer; Sir Ian MacKellan has seen it a couple of times and has written him a letter of recommendation.
:)
If you live in the area, definitely don't pass this one up, it's well worth seeing
--
Max
My wife and I saw the "One Man Star Wars Trilogy" as my b-day gift to her on Dec. 19th at the Apollo Theater in Chicago (on Lincoln Ave.). The tickets were $19 each plus tax. Seating was for 175 and maybe 125 people were there on a bitterly cold 5-degree-fahrenheit Sunday afternoon.
The show was fantastic! We are relatively big star wars buffs, so the trivia contest at the start of the show was welcome. We got most of them, but several were so hard that an 11-year-old had to get it (the exact wording of Han Solo as being 'the main course' for the Ewoks).
The person doing the show (sorry, don't remember his name) was very talented. Several people sneezed, had to step out to the lobby, or otherwise 'interrupted' the show, and he acknowledged each humorously, in character and out, then picked up where he left off. This to me was the mark of someone who has paid their dues in improv theater being a very, very fast think-on-your-feet performer.
His intonations and body language were exquisite. He managed to make fun of the characters and still be true to the spirit of the show quite effectively. We had a wonderful night of it, a very funny and very worthwhile show!
At the end of the evening, he gave us a preview by doing Golum ("precious") and we knew it would also be a great show.
This is high praise from me. I've seen quite a bit of improv and small-performance theater due to a friend being in the scene and being invited to a variety of performances.
Just my 5 cents. We'll see him again almost assuredly. I hope he makes a good DVD deal recording his performance.
-- Kevin
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
I'm pretty sure it's the same guy... I saw the One-Man Lord of the Rings at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival (like, two years ago...phhbbbbt to Chicago) and this guy is amazing. He works up a real good sweat running around, doing all the voice and physical stunts. At one point there was even a baby making distracting sounds in the audience, and he used the sounds as effects to add to his performance. The man is on speed or something, go see him if you can.
I think he added to the mythology behind the book. He also added a little bit of mystery, and made you wonder what was going on in the Tolkien world in general.
Now that Suprnova is gone where can I get some torrents of this guy?
What no torrents? Bastards.
Slashdot is an anagram for Has Dolts, and I am Dolt number 468543
One man to play them all and in the darkness bind them! Seriously this sounds like quite an interesting idea, wish I could see it although I can't help wondering if it would turn out like that play in Family Guy where all the guy's characters sound the same.
Ode to the Gib50n you autistic retards...
This will show what a nerd I am. Many Tolkien experts think that Tom Bombadil is Aule, one of the most powerful Valar (think angel-beings). Gandalf is one of the lesser of the Valar (called Maiar), so think of all the power Tom would have. Surprising that Frodo and the hobbits came into contact with him and did not even know how powerful a figure they had met.
I heard that it's been cancelled and all the showings wil now be One Man Star Wars instead. I go to a High School in the South Suburbs of Chicago. I'm pretty close with the art teacher there and we planned a big group outing with him, another teacher and some other students. He called the theater to book tickets and he was told that Charlie Ross was send a cease and desist by the Tolkien family or whoever it is that owns the rights. So we ended up booking a show that was originally supposed to be One Man Lord of the Rings, but is now One Man Star Wars. I haven't seen anything in the media indicating this but this was supposedly from the folks at the Apollo Theater. We'll see what happens when we go on Monday.
I saw this at the Edmonton Fringe Festival this past summer, and as a devoted LOTR fan, I have to admit, it was AWESOME. One caveat -- the play I saw was an adaptation of Peter Jackson's movies, not of the books themselves, so be prepared for the same changes as in the movies. The videos just don't do it justice.... If you have a chance, go see this. You will not be sorry. The bigger fan you are, the more you'll appreciate the little jokes, the sideways glances, the amazing characterizations. The casual LOTR fans left amused, but not moved. I only wish that I could have seen it more than once.
This is like, just a few minutes long and stuff.
http://www.compfused.com/directlink/107/
We went and saw the show here in Victoria, BC.
This guy's amazing. Each movie/book takes up 20 minutes and at the end of each 20 minutes the guy looks exhausted from the amount of energy he puts into the show.
When he was doing the show in Vancouver recently, Ian McKellen was in town and saw the show. He then arranged to have it filmed and a copy sent to Peter Jackson.
Basically it impressed Ian McKellen so much he wrote the guy a reference.
He captures the characters and the essence of the books/movies perfectly. Even my gf, who isn't that big a fan of LOTR, was laughing so much her sides hurt.
GO SEE THIS SHOW!!!!!
This should be modded up to the sky...
Fucking christ this makes me sad...
Rest in peace Jerry...
God bless.
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
This is the first I've heard of this guy and I have to say I'm glad I live in Chicago now - I'm definitely checking it out - I can't help but think of the movie Free Enterprise where William Shatner has the idea to do a musical Julius Caeser where he plays every role (except Calphunia who would be played by Sharon Stone) - absolutely brilliant ....
"This is simultaneously the best and worst movie I've ever seen" - Justin during Free Enterprise
calling all destroyers
One-Man pr0n! Imagine that!
He performed it at the 2004 Edmonton Fringe Festival (he did Star Wars in 2003). I reviewed it for the CBC. My opener: It was so good, I couldn't stop fingering my precious!
If you ever get the chance to see these guys ...
...
I saw "The Messiah" in the mid-80's, performed by Desmond "Olivier" Dingle and his sidekick, who at the time was played by Jim Broadbent (since of The Borrowers and other movies).
They have also done such epics as Lawrence of Arabia and IIRC The Old Testament.
As might be expected, the mechanics of the production and ego of the director seem to get in the way of the story as often as not
Yikes.. a little more information then we needed to know thanks.
This guy is a Geek hero!
If making an ass of yourself gets in the way of your having fun, you should hand in your membership card.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
was by opera-singer-turned-comedienne Anna Russell, who hilariously sings (all the parts), plays the piano, and summarizes completely accurately the entire 4-opera Ring Cycle by Wagner in 20 minutes.
Best line: "I'm not making this up, you know!"
Did any see the Star Wars One-Man_Show?
Did he make Greedo shoot first?
It is a very physical performance, and can get confusing in some places for those not very familiar with LoTR (my guess - most slashdaughters reading this would have no problems ;-). Very humourous presentation.
As someone else said, this guy can take a round out of those who dare to interrupt him. Turn off your cell phone when the performance is on. You have been warned.
Another good candidate would be The Matrix trilogy -- you can read each transcript in about 20 minutes. Less if you skip over Keanu's "Whoa" lines... :-)