Deep in the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, a creaky network of girders and cantilevers has supported theatrical spectacle ever since the building reopened in 1812. But this Grade I-listed temple of illusion has never witnessed anything quite as ambitious the show that began previewing there last month. The Lord of the Rings, the three-hour, £12.5 million musical that opens on June 19, relies for at least some of its visual coups on the most complex engineering ever assembled under any stage. It doesn’t look like much from the gantry alongside: a huge drum. But inside is a carousel of moving parts that allows 17 separate sections of the revolving stage to rise and fall in seemingly infinite permutations, to make the bridges, mountains, valleys and ramparts of Middle-earth. This groundbreaking piece of kit has dominated rehearsals, says the director, Matthew Warchus. Everything – music, choreography, lighting, sound design and (last but hopefully not least) actors – must be synchronised to the motions of the floor. [More]
Day: June 10, 2007
If they gave out Olivier Awards for bravery, the producer Kevin Wallace would win hands-down. It’s not just because of the insane task he set himself: taking a 1,200-page epic with mighty battles, ungodly creatures and a core cast of a dozen characters that on the big screen took ten hours and three films to tell, and compressing it into just three hours on a single stage. With songs. It’s because when his multimillion-dollar The Lord of the Rings extravaganza opened in Toronto last year to, let us diplomatically say, less than universal rapture, he remained cool under fire. [More]