Middle Earth to touch down in London

A reworked version of the Toronto production of Lord of the Rings will open in London next year.

The show is to open at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane on June 19, 2007.

Canada made theatre history when the ambitious musical, which attempts to transfer J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy to the stage, opened at Toronto's Princess of Wales theatre in March.

The Toronto show, which was delayed by technical glitches and has been adjusted throughout its run, will be adapted further for the London stage.

The third act is being rewritten and the running time reduced to three hours from about three and a half hours now, says Kevin Wallace, producer of the $23-million show.

"The scale of the story has demanded ingenious design," Wallace said in an interview with Canadian Press.

"It is a very expensive physical production, and it's on a scale audiences would expect to see in somewhere like Las Vegas. It's not something audiences would expect to see in the West End."

Britain's Matthew Warcus, who directedin Toronto, will also helm the London production.

The show, featuring music by Bollywood composer A.R. Rahman and Finnish folk group Vaartina, dominates the Dora Awards, Toronto's annual theatre awards, with 15 nominations, including outstanding new musical and direction of a musical.

Reviews were mixed

It has had mixed reviews.

CBC.ca's Alec Scott called it "the most inventively staged show in history." But some critics said the story was lost amid the technical wizardry.

Charles Spencer of The Telegraph in Britain characterized the show as "weary" and concluded there was "nothing here to rival the imaginative visual coups and heart-tugging emotion of such great family shows as Billy Elliot, The Lion King and Mary Poppins."

The show has book and lyrics by Warcus and Shaun McKenna, who adapted Tolkien'smassive three-volume storyof a self-deprecating hobbit named Frodo who tries to rid Middle Earth of an evil overlord.

The London show will retain a cast of 50, but be tightened and reworked.

Wallace said he was confident it would appeal to British audiences.

"It probably does have a European sensibility, a British sensibility, in terms of the use of text and the use of the spoken word," he said. "It's coming back to its spiritual home."