By Steven H Silver: Last night, Elaine and I saw The Lord of the Rings: A Musical Tale at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Although billed as running 2 hours and 45 minutes, including a 15 minute intermission, the show started at 7:00 and ended at 10:10. Originally billed as simply The Lord of the Rings when it debuted in 2006, it has been somewhat reworked from its original form and opened in Bagnor, UK last year. After its Chicago run ends on September 1, it will travel to Auckland, New Zealand.

While in the lobby, I got to hear a woman call out to a man “I like your ears” and he responded “I like yours, too.” Both were wearing elf ears and the woman was in full costume. Prior to the show, tickets holders were sent notes that cosplay was welcome, but no weapons or full masks were allowed and, although Hobbits went barefoot, audience members must wear shoes. In fact, the Hobbits on the stage wore sandals.

Perhaps fifteen minutes before the play was scheduled to begin, the cast began appearing on stage and moving through the audience, inviting members to play a ring toss game, juggle, or just chatting with the audience members. At one point, when Bilbo (Rick Hall) appeared in the audience, the cast led the entire audience in singing “Happy Birthday” to him. Bilbo even made his way up to the first balcony, where we were sitting. We also discovered that the couple next to us were attending because a friend of theirs, Ben Mathew, was playing Pippin. The cast would continue to move through the audience (including in the balconies) throughout the show.

The play opens with Bilbo’s birthday party and the first act, which ran 90 minutes took us to the breaking of the Fellowship. The second act condensed the final two volumes into 75 minutes. Much was excised, including the entire Theoden/Helm’s Deep story line. The play includes Treebeard (voiced by John Lithgow), but probably could have been omitted.

Discussing the play after it was over, Elaine and I agreed that it probably only makes sense to people who are familiar with the storyline from the books or the films, otherwise, the actions of Aragorn (Will James, Jr.), Legolas (understudied by Luke Nowakowski), Gimli (Ian Maryfield), Merry (Eileen Doan), and Pippin in the second act seem disjointed. Gimli and Legolas, especially do not seem to have a lot to do in this version.

The focus of the second act is really on Frodo (Spencer Davis Milford), Samwise (Michael Kurowski), and Gollum (Tony Bozzuto). Of the three, Samwise is the most engaging and Bozzuto owns his role as Gollum both physically and verbally, doing a wonderful imitation of Andy Serkis from the films, although I can’t imagine how he sings using that voice (especially since he was able to get across that he is a talented singer).

The subtitle is “A Musical Tale,” although the songs generally do not move the plot along and are incidental. A few are hummable, but many are forgettable. It may be the topic of the songs, but most of them would not feel out of place in a filk circle. There is no orchestra, instead the music is provided by the actors playing instruments on stage and nearly all of the major characters play instruments at some point.

Throughout the show, we visit the Shire, the Prancing Pony, Rivendell, Moria, Isengard, Lothlorien, Fangorn, Minas Tirith, Shelob’s lair, and Mount Doom. Unlike the films, we also get a taste of the Scouring of the Shire. Although there are minor changes to the set, the different settings were mostly handled with lighting and projection changes. Most of them worked, but there is one scene in which Galadriel sings while standing in a cut out circle of light that reminded me of the opening of many James Bond films.

Back in the 1980s, I was a regular attendee of the interactive play Dungeon Master and watching the actors move on the stage, I felt, at times, that I was watching a big-budget version of that show, perhaps because many of the fight scenes were staged in slow-motion. Speaking of the battle scenes, when Aragorn was attempting to rally his troops, you never got the feeling he was talking to more than a half dozen people. On the other hand, the five actors portraying the orcs (who seemed to me to be depicted as an inner city street gang) managed to appear to be a never-ending horde.

The fight choreography was stronger than the dance choreography. The fights seemed naturalistic, but dancing, aside from in the opening scene at the party, felt like it was choreographed specifically to put on a show for the watching audience and therefore felt staged and a little awkward.

The special effects were mostly well done, although the first, Bilbo’s disappearance, probably played better from the orchestra than it does from the balconies from where you can see the trap open. The Nazgul’s horses are depicted as enormous horse skull puppets with glowing red eyes and move throughout the audience. The Shelob spider puppet is incredibly well done as well.

I would recommend the show with some reservations. If you are not a Lord of the Rings fan, this is not the proper introduction for you. You’ll spend much of the show asking your companions what is happening and who people are, many of whom don’t really seem to have a purpose. Fans of The Lord of the Rings will enjoy it, filling in the parts that aren’t fully explained (and probably griping that their favorite parts or characters are given short shrift or omitted entirely).

The show also featured Tom Amandes as Gandalf, Suzanne Hannau as Rosie Cotton, Jeff Parker and Elrond and Saruman, Alina Taber as Arwen, Matthew C. Yee as Boromir, and Lauren Zakrin as Galadriel. Rick Hall not only played Bilbo, but also the Steward of Gondor.

[Reprinted with permission.]