Into the fire

DIRECTOR Matthew Warchus used to joke that it would be easier to toss a ring into a volcano than to mount a musical stage version of “The Lord of the Rings,” the sprawling J.R.R. Tolkien literary epic.

But lately he’s discovered that it’s no joke.

At least not now that the $23-million production of what the creative team is labeling “a play with music” has begun previews at Toronto’s Princess of Wales Theatre on its way to Thursday’s highly anticipated opening. This is, after all, one of the most expensive theatrical productions ever, and it comes on the heels of an Oscar-winning film trilogy of the Tolkien classics, of which more than 100 million books have been sold worldwide. On top of paring 1,200 pages to 3 1/2 hours of text and music to tell the by now familiar tale of hobbits, elves and humans pitted against evil wizards and their henchmen, the creators faced the challenge of assembling a team of 75 technicians from around the world, a cast of 55 -- classical actors, singers, dancers and acrobats -- and a 25-piece orchestra. And that doesn’t even begin to broach the loaded expectations of the audience, especially “LOTR” devotees.

One can see why the 39-year-old British director wryly compares his creative team to a fellowship that had to run a gantlet of impossible odds to dispose of an enchanted ring in the volcanic Crack of Doom.

However, the fellowship for this particular version of “The Lord of the Rings” -- which includes British producer Kevin Wallace, book co-writer Shaun McKenna, choreographer Peter Darling, designer Christopher Nightingale and composers A.H. Rahman and the Finnish band Varttina -- appears to have set for themselves an even more daunting task than all of the above: to create a global success in the tradition of “Cats,” “The Phantom of the Opera” and “The Lion King” by inventing a new hybrid of musical theater to accommodate the demands of the story.

Warchus says that when he was first approached a few years ago, he was skeptical that “LOTR” could succeed on stage within the rules of an art form that he considered antiquated -- at least when applied to the telling of a serious epic. “Musical comedy is still a very vigorous genre, but shows like ‘Les Miserables’ are becoming or have become dated,” says the director, known largely for the intimate Yasmina Reza drama “Art” and a controversial Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies.” “How would you do something so epic and serious now? What you have to evolve into is a new form of complex musical theater storytelling.”

Wallace, the British lead producer who has ushered the project since its inception, concedes there are obstacles: “The biggest challenge has always been that this is not a conventional musical; it’s a hybrid of music, text, spectacle. But we knew that we wanted the spoken word to be the primary engine.”

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ANCIENT, MODERN

AT a recent preview four weeks into the world premiere run, “LOTR” appeared to have as many different roots as the gigantic tree at center stage when the play begins, a bucolic representation of the Shire. What was explicitly presented in the Peter Jackson films is here suggested, not unlike what Julie Taymor achieved in “The Lion King” through primitive storytelling. The Black Riders that swoop down on the hobbits are clearly men on stilts, their fiberglass skulls and the horses’ heads swathed in flowing black capes and illuminated in a haunting light. Their demise comes via sheets of blue fabric, suggesting a swelling river.

The battles owe more to Shakespearean stagecraft. The vast armies of evil orcs are less seen than heard, the sound of their whizzing arrows amped to a high-decibel level. These theatrics are enhanced by 21st century technology -- the wizardry of hydraulics, flies and special effects that enliven the adventures of Frodo, Sam, Gollum and their brethren. And when the quest leads its young heroes into the courts of Lothlorien and Gondor, the majestic pageantry can bring to mind a Radio City Music Hall extravaganza or even “Riverdance.”

With few exceptions -- notably a rousing scene in an inn that seems straight out of “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” -- the music is organically presented, folk songs, ballads and anthems that are more medieval mystery play than Mama Rose. All in all, a medley of influences, from the minimalism of Peter Brook, say, to Las Vegas spectacle.

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KEEPING IT REAL

THE creative team of “LOTR,” however, says the payoff for all the fireworks will be lost if the story fails to engage. “In the end, $23 million isn’t going to go anywhere unless the audiences connect, powerfully, with the characters and the story,” Wallace says. “At its most basic, beyond this fantastical, amazing world that Tolkien was able to create, there are simple but moving relationships of romantic love, between Arwen and Aragon; of friendship and loyalty, Sam and Frodo; of parent-child bonds as Gandalf has with many of the hobbits. If we can get the audience to connect with that, then they will actually have an experience of substance.”

Saul Zaentz, co-producer of “The Lord of the Rings,” says that his faith in Wallace’s and Warchus’ ability to deliver just that is what led him to assign the rights to them. Speaking by phone from his Berkeley office, the Oscar-winning producer of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Amadeus” and “The English Patient” noted that many people had approached him for the stage rights since he acquired them from the Tolkien estate in the late ‘70s. But he had never encountered anybody he believed could adapt the work successfully. “I had seen ‘Art’ and admired Matthew’s work, and Kevin came very highly recommended from people who’d worked with him. What I was concerned with -- that they preserve the integrity of the books -- I was sure they could pull off.”

Zaentz adds that after attending a 2004 workshop of the book and music in London, he felt they had come up with “a very clever, economical way of putting the story up on the stage without losing its essential qualities.”

Wallace’s credentials as in-house producer for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group from 1994-2001 gave him experience in the logistics of mounting elaborate musicals all over the world and direct involvement with choreographer Darling and designer Howell. Holding up “Phantom of the Opera” as the gold standard in, as he puts it, “how to keep things moving,” Wallace pursued Warchus, whose acclaimed but short-lived West End musical “Our House” had impressed him. Furthermore, he felt that the director had the “spiritual dimension” that would enhance Tolkien’s moral universe.

Warchus, however, was unwilling to throw his hat in the ring until he could re-immerse himself in the Tolkien novels, hoping to find in them a path into a possible stage version that would make people forget the film trilogy. “What I found there was a world of folk, organic, natural textures -- the sound of wind, water, trees, leaves, air, mountains, music constantly erupting from unexpected places,” says the director. “The novels are full of music, people constantly throwing back their heads and singing anthems, prayers, incantations. So I thought we should draw on these ancient folk storytelling traditions, and to the extent that we used technology and special effects, they would have to be in the service of this principle. If it worked, people would stop the comparisons with the film and get lost in the new version.”

Key, of course, was making the music as organic as everything else, as far away from traditional declamatory singing as possible. Intent on avoiding that formula, the creators tapped into the exotic rhythms of Rahman, one of India’s most successful composers, who had recently bowed on Broadway, albeit unsuccessfully, with “Bombay Dreams.” Since Tolkien had based his invented Middle-earth languages in part on Finnish, there was a certain logic to inviting the contemporary folk music group Varttina to collaborate. The music would function, as Warchus put it, as “hot spots” in the narrative, enhancing, but not intrinsic to, the story. Indeed, the creative team was convinced that down the pike, high schools and community theaters would be able to stage their version simply as a play, without music if need be. Unlike a traditional musical, its emotional arc would reside in the text.

But while there would be no chorus line of orcs and no “I Want” song from Frodo through which he would convey to an audience his yearnings, Warchus and Wallace discovered that the musical theater -- even a play with music -- had a way of insisting on its own exigencies. In fact, recalls Warchus, the first musical number the hobbits sing as they leave their home in the Shire had been stripped down instrumentally to conform with the folk storytelling. “But we had to concede that we are in this heightened form of musical theater -- this commercial mainstream -- so we added instrumentation to make the audience feel that they were in safe hands,” says Warchus.

Likewise, in the sequence in which the hobbits arrive at an inn to await the wizard Gandalf, the stage explodes in a song-and-dance number. “Yet I hope there is still a quirky, edgy distorted version of what is more conventionally familiar,” Warchus says. “I call it the ‘Tim Burton world.’ What’s interesting is that this is not very far from what Tolkien wrote. In the book, they do stand on tables, they sing and dance.”

Much later, Sam and Frodo sing of their homesickness for the Shire, a number Warchus says is reminiscent of “Anatevka” from “Fiddler on the Roof.” That song, in turn, is followed by a musical soliloquy that in the hands of the Gollum received the most enthusiastic response of any scene from the preview audience. “Gollum, if you like, has the license to have the one musical theater moment in the show,” Warchus says, “since he’s just heard the hobbits singing an old hobbit song and, once being a hobbit himself, it seemed natural that he would be arguing with himself in song. He’s a unique character, so we essentially broke the rules with him.”

The music, at least, would not be compared to what had come before, something not true of the battle scenes. Acknowledging that Jackson’s battles were the ne plus ultra in filmmaking, Warchus said that he could not hope to compete with the memory, even though he knew that he would have to “do the best-ever stage battles.” For that he would need not only a full array of stage technology and clever choreography but also the willing complicity of the audience. “It’s a collaboration,” he says. “You suggest something and the audience’s imagination completes it. It’s more of a hallucination, a dream.”

In one battle, however, the effects are more literal. The decapitation of one soldier brought to mind, at least to one observer, nothing more than the dismembering of the knight in “Spamalot.” Not that the ents, the gnarly trees that come to the aid of the hobbits, didn’t also bring up another Monty Python vision. “I’ve always said that it would be much, much easier to do a spoof of ‘Lord of the Rings’ than a serious, real ‘Lord of the Rings’ -- and boy, would it be funny,” Warchus says, laughing ruefully and saying that rehearsals were filled with spoofs and parodies of what they were doing. “The earnest epic veers very closely to the silly and it begs being undermined, but we’ve tried to stay on the right side of that.”

He pauses, then adds: “This is going to sound pretentious, I’m afraid, but what we’ve tried to do is create something progressive. A spoof by its nature is a cul-de-sac, artistically. You can’t go any further with it. It’s a short-term fix. But at least we are, hopefully, a needed antidote to that vogue.”

Still, Warchus understands that because the “Lord of the Rings” films are so fresh in people’s minds, a stage production is inevitably a minefield of expectations.

And he has had some experience in dealing with the proprietary feelings engendered by something so ingrained in the public consciousness. Some years ago, his production of a “Peter Pan” drama featured the titular boy as a wild ragamuffin with black spiky hair, torn dirty pajamas and a vest made of raven’s feathers. Before a matinee performance, he happened to be in the lobby of the theater and noticed a young boy who’d dressed the part: in traditional green tunic, stockings, turned up slippers and peaked cap. “I felt terrible, knowing he was going to be sitting there and someone else was going to fly through the window,” Warchus recalls. “Similarly here, the characters look very different, sound different, move differently. We don’t want to confound expectations just for the sake of being original, but, hopefully, to replace them with something more rewarding.”