What a crazy night! Lord of the Rings The Musical promises: “Thrilling music, enthralling choreography, remarkable staging and stunning design combine to transform Drury Lane into Tolkien’s Middle-earth in a mesmerising and spectacular theatrical event.”

Billed as the most expensive West End musical to date (costing at least £25 million apparently if you include the Toronto showing) LOTR The Musical definitely had a lot to live up to – I read somewhere that they will have to fill the 2,200 theatre to capacity for 34 weeks just to even break even! (Though based on what I saw tonight it shouldn’t be to much of a problem.) That’s a lot of pressure on a franchise which already has hugely popular books and movies to live up to. The fact that not only a week before one of the actors injured himself during the show only added to tonight’s intrigue. Happily there were no such mishaps tonight.

The show actually “started” about 15 minutes before the official start with hobbits running around the theatre chasing fireflies (how they made the fireflies is still a mystery to me today.) It actually reminded me of Cirque du Soleil performances where they get the crowd energised and ready for the start of the show with their clowns and other antics, and in fact the show does borrow quite a bit from Cirque techniques. From this it moved smoothly into the start of the musical, hobbit-music included, and you actually did feel like you were part of Bilbo Baggin’s birthday party. It was a good start.

I think it helps to be slightly familiar with the plot of Lord of the Rings because in trying to condense three books or over 9 hours of movie footage into 3.5 hours with a 20 minute interval some of the detail is definitely lost. Having said that it turns out there were plenty of spots during the musical itself which they could have easily cut and saved themselves a few more minutes here and there.

The most obvious and first impression you get from the musical is that the staging is simply breath-taking – from the forest extending out to the audience, to the golden ring through which we are pulled into the Shire, to the moving stage which revolved, lifted, and descended to convey a sense of movement and to the brilliant use of the lighting, in particular to make people disappear it was simply brilliant and truly creative.

The costumes were well made and imaginative with the undead, puppet spider and Balrog truly terrifying and the Ents on their stilts hilarious. Strangely enough the orcs seemed to borrow from the hyenas from the Lion King musical. Their movement was smooth and conveyed the sense of urgency required though I’m not quite sure why they were given such crutches.

The music was surprisingly effective though at times I think the elven singing went on for far too long and since they weren’t speaking English it was a bit of – okay get on with it. Aside from the singing and the songs the use of sound actually contributed quite well to the overall feel of the the musical drawing you into the emotion or feeling of the moment.

From an individual performance perspective the stage was shared by a wide-range of characters so everyone got their bit of time on stage. The acting was fairly so-so (but this maybe had to do with some of the admittedly cheesy lines the actors/actresses were obliged to speak.) The stand out performance was Michael Therriault’s Gollum. He had Gollum down pat from the voice, to the schizophrenia, and to the physical movements – all slimy and bendy and just generally fantastic. Too bad he wasn’t on stage for all that long. The elves had too many strange hand movements as well that had me giggling at inappropriate moments. Despite this Galadriel, played by former Mary Poppins Laura Michelle Kelly, did have her moments. No one can deny she has a beautiful voice and good stage presence.

So, did Lord of the Rings deliver on its promise?. For the most part it did – mainly with the choreography, staging and design (absolutely super!) The music and lyrics were a little less than thrilling but most of it was fairly pleasant to the ears and there were at least one or two songs that were memorable. At the end of the day there can be no denying that the star of the show is the set. I’m not sure what this says about the Lord of the Rings as a musical but I would recommend this show to anyone who is up for a true spectacle.