When Kirk was 12, we had our first father & son trip to London. We trained into London Waterloo, we tubed up to Tottenham Court, we bought comic books at www.forbiddenplanet.com, we saw the www.suttonhoo.org exhibit in the www.britishmuseum.org, we found a little cafe that served lox & bagels (salmon bagels are still hard to find in London), and then we went to Leicester Square to see The Fellowship of the Ring (www.lordoftherings.net) on the biggest screen in the UK. We had a great time and it was a memorable day. In subsequent years we followed it up with The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, which were stunning on that huge screen, especially the siege of Rohan. It was fitting then, before he heads back to the States for college, Kirk and I had last LOTR London experience, catching the stage musical on its final performance day.
Words can’t really describe how uninspiring the musical is, but let me try. How about ‘Not memorable’? If it seems that I’m able to provide a level of detail contradictory to that assessment, it is only because I was taking notes during the performance. www.lotr.com claims ‘unforgettable music and heartfelt performances,’ but I can promise you that the music is completely forgettable, and we didn’t feel that the performance was heartfelt at all, with most of the cast totally lacking in presence–at least until Galadriel Powerboobs appeared. Parts of her had significant presence, although not as much as I was hoping for after seeing the publicity stills. But let me describe it in order:
The show begins with the Hobbits on stage, merrily capturing fireflies. Not a feature of the book as I remember it, but as a stage setter, it establishes that Hobbits don’t have a big impact on events in Middle Earth. Aging bachelor Hobbit Bilbo Baggins throws his own birthday party, concluding it by slipping on the one ring and dramatically vanishing. A rude way to treat your guests, it neatly serves to alert all the dark forces that the ring is in the Shire and Bilbo has it. Bilbo immediately leaves town.
17 years and a quick prop change later, an incredibly pompous wizard named Gandalf Ben Kenobi tells Bilbo’s bachelor nephew and heir, Frodo, that the ring is key to the fate of the free world, and he really needs to take good care of it, suggesting that the party is over, and it would be a good idea to leave town. Everybody ought to have a maid, but Frodo is served by the stout Sam, who accompanies Frodo into the woods with Merry and Pippin, ending up in a pub. Despite Gandalf’s warnings to keep a low profile, Frodo provides a rousing drinking song for the master of the house, and perversely puts the ring on his finger, instantly making him visible to the dark side.
Sort of like goth panto ponies, the Nazgûl prance around and act menacing. Strider, whose lanky long hair and face paint makes him look more like an American Indian than heir to the throne of Gondor, attempts to limit the damage of their attack, but the elves save the day by flushing the panto horses down the river. Apparently, the director wanted to portray the elves as being fey and otherworldly, but we thought they were just weird. They can’t talk and especially can’t sing without constant and annoying balletic hand jive. Elrond makes pompous pronouncements in stilted English while constantly signing. Fortunately, Sam provides several welcome moments of comedy tonight.
In spite of long-standing racial differences and a depressing history of cultural conflict, an obviously incompatible team is created by adding a dwarf, elf, wizard is provided to keep the Hobbits out of trouble. They immediately get trapped in a snow storm. They immediately decide to avoid the snow by going underground into a haunted dwarf cave. Gimli sings about how nice it would be if we could all live underground, and the fellowship is immediately confront by a huge demon. Gandalf forcefully suggests “you shall not pass!”, the entire house is choked with stage smoke, there’s a large whoomp, and tissue paper Balrog bits rain down on the audience. The first act is over.
The remaining cast members immediately end up in the elven realm of Lothlórien. Tolkien totally avoided sexuality in his novels, an omission rectified by the Lady Galadriel, a well-breasted elf who descends from the ceiling in a sheer skirt with platform pumps, hand-jiving away. Pompous and spastic, she’s a welcome visual treat in bustier and headdress. Accompanied by a couple of sopranos and a chorus of pseudo-mythic types hanging from elastic ropes, it feels almost Wagnerian, with a touch of Cirque De Enya. Frodo gets all googoo eyed over the shapely elf queen, and bares his feelings by kneeling and offering her a ring. Giving them each an anorak, she kicks the fellowship out of Quidam. At this point, the flakiest member of the fellowship, Boring MacStewart, explains to Frodo that he could make better use of the ring, so Frodo puts it on, immediately drawing the attention of all the forces of the dark side. The Jets use crutches to attack the Sharks. Merry and Pippin find their corner of the sky with the Ents who say ni. Megalomaniac Saruman is cast down by Gandalf in a lightstaff duel and his army of crippled Orcs are treed. The best effect in the whole play involves Gollum descending a sheer wall, face down, to confront the reluctant Sam and the increasingly apathetic Frodo. Gollum sings a song about how pathetic it is to have lived in a cave for hundreds of years and still not own any real estate. The second act is over.
Although she’s a hot and immortal elven babe, and he’s a nerdy human pretender to a throne empty for a millennium who has just spent a century or two creeping around the mountains with half a sword and no shower, Arwen is perversely drawn to Strider/Aragorn. Remaining in Rivendell, she sends him her hologram and they sing a sappy duet. Doesn’t it seem like once in every show, there comes a song like this? Totally geeked by her support, and finally in possession of a usable weapon, Aragorn makes a rousing speech, suggesting that the cause is futile, but explaining that from this day to the ending of the world, we shall be remember’d. Aragorn, Gandalf and the remaining band of brothers, accompanied by recruits from Gondor, engage in futile battle with the forces of the dark side. Frodo and Sam have a bad time of it, but eventually reach the crack the Crack of Doom, at which point, Frodo decides that maybe he would like to be the Dark Lord after all. Gollum takes the ring from him, conveniently falling into the pit of doom, thereby saving the free world, but not ending the performance. Its been a long day, and bells are ringing.
I never realized how little actual meat there is in LOTR. The essentials are neatly captured in the now-closed London production: ring found, discussion, quest, near miss, ring destroyed. Kirk did express disappointment that Tom Bombadil didn’t make a personal appearance, given his musical aptitude, which would have added some needed talent. Admittedly, the packed house of this final matinee did provide a standing ovation, but reviews have been mixed, and I have to believe that if the audiences had been consistently enthusiastic, the show would have run for more than 14 months. That said, Cologne is expecting a German-language version for next year, and I think Kirk and I ought to see it.
I don’t want to give the impression that we didn’t have a fun day out. We had some good laughs–several times during the show. We started with dim sum in Chinatown for lunch, followed by a visit to Kirk’s favorite Chinese grocery for snacks. We spent some time wandering around Forbidden Planet, which moved into a significantly bigger space sometime between The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. We wandered around Covent Garden and Trafalgar Square, and bought way too much junk at www.cybercandy.co.uk. We walked back to Waterloo, stopping first at Kirk’s favorite Japanese takeout for rice balls and sushi, before catching our train to Ascot. After a 20 minute walk home from the station, we put up our feet and ate our sushi while watching Princess Mononoke.
Kirk and I have had some great days out in London. Besides the LOTR films, we’ve also seen a couple of the Star Wars movies. We’ve stayed overnight a couple of times, once with college friend Rick Martin and his son Richard, who live nearby. We’ve ridden the Routemaster, we’ve gone Christmas shopping, and once after I lost Kirk in www.hamleys.com I had him paged. We’ve had multiple short trips to the British Museum, we’ve spent hours in Forbidden Planet.
I’ll miss him when he goes to school next month.
Most people express disbelief when I try to explain what the rolling stock is like. I have checked, and one of the series of cars does date back to 1957-1961. They call these cars ’slammer’ cars because they don’t have pneumatic sliding doors (a feature developed on the London Underground shortly before WWI), but instead have narrow doors that are open and closed manually by the passengers. Although they have a lot of wood trim on them, presumably they are made of metal on the inside. They are curved, to match the sides of the wagons, and are hinged at the top and bottom. Such doors do not exactly snick closed with the precise assurance of a Mercedes limousine-they need a running start to close completely. Hence the name ’slammer’. A series of 8 doors line each side of the car between 10 pairs of facing bench seats, forcing in and outgoing passengers to climb over each other’s legs.
One side of the interior of the car has facing pairs of benches with room for 3 skinny people, and the other side has room for 2 skinny people. Each pair of benches has a sturdy wire shelf welded above it for luggage. The seats are covered with a vivid read and orange upholstery, nicely matching the light gray walls, robins egg blue doors, and the charcoal black linoleum floors. Everything is lit with a bilious green fluorescent glow, from the bare open tubes that actually work. Giving up a set at each end of the car to facilitate use of a skinny wooden door leading to the next wagon means that there are a total of 78 seats in each car. This probably explains why they keep the cars in service-because they have such a high seating capacity. Running two 8 car trains an hour ensures an efficient use of the rolling stock, often resulting in standing room only crowds at the London end of the trip.This being a commuter train, there is no food service, which is perhaps desirable when there are no waste baskets (or ‘dust bins’ as they call them here). The long distance trains have very nice plastic waste baskets, but our local is littered with newspapers and old food wrappers.