An earthy musical journey to Middle-earth

Don’t be surprised if you spot Gollum creeping around just behind you. The prime asset of this revival of a musical that was a multimillion-pound failure at Drury Lane a decade and a half ago is that the audience is so close to the heart of the action. Few theatres generate as much intimacy as the Watermill; its bucolic setting adds an extra touch of earthiness to this journey to Middle-earth.

The fact that the Berkshire venue — long one of my favourites — is staging such an ambitious project not long after controversially losing its Arts Council funding suggests the artistic director, Paul Hart, hasn’t reined in his ambitions. This venture weaves magic on a budget that might not even cover a month’s sandwiches on a Peter Jackson film set.

To be honest, though, if you’re not a Tolkien aficionado — and I’m not — you’ll still find this saga heavy going. As ever at the Watermill, the actor-musician backdrop generates added passion. In this score — a collaboration between Christopher Nightingale, AR Rahman and the Finnish folk group Varttina — Mark Aspinall’s scaled-back orchestrations strip away the bombast.

Even so, it’s probably impossible to condense all that mythologising and mischief into a single show — even one that lasts some three hours and 20 minutes. Hart’s production is also bookended with scenes set in the Watermill’s beautiful garden. The introduction, in which John O’Mahony’s sprightly Bilbo Baggins celebrates his “eleventyfirst” birthday has a charmingly communal ambience. By the end of a long evening, however, I wasn’t quite so eager to shuffle outside to see the loose ends being tied up. And we know how unreliable the British weather can be.

If the songs — with lyrics by Shaun McKenna and Matthew Warchus — don’t linger in the memory, the 20-strong cast give it their all. While it was a pity we didn’t see more of Louis Maskell’s Frodo, Nuwan Hugh Perera steals scenes as the ever-loyal Samwise Gamgee. Matthew Bugg’s Gollum is suitably sinister and Peter Marinker’s Gandalf dispenses wisdom and grace.

Simon Kenny’s set design, George Reeve’s projections and Rory Beaton’s lighting are miracles of economy. The fight director Dani McCallum delivers stirring battle scenes too, especially considering the stage’s modest dimensions. Charlie Tymms’s puppet design offers moments of Grand Guignol. Just don’t sit too near the front if you have a spider phobia.

CLIVE DAVIS

Whether or not you’re a Lord of the Rings fanatic, surely part of the genius of Tolkien’s world is its enormity? Shaun McKenna and Matthew Warchus’s 2006 musical adaptation attempts the absurd task of compressing the 1,100-page fantasy epic down into a comparatively minuscule three hours. No surprise, then, that it doesn’t entirely work.

But despite the illogical premise, this new production directed by the Watermill’s artistic director, Paul Hart, manages to crackle with innovation. The show begins in the theatre’s delightful outside gardens, where we are greeted by hobbits who are ready to celebrate the 111th birthday of Bilbo Baggins (an endearing John O’Mahony). After a good helping of happy barn dancing, Bilbo decides it is time to bequeath everything he owns to Frodo – including the ring.

After some years of relative peace, Frodo learns of the ring’s dark horrors and sets off on a journey to destroy it once and for all. His quest leads us away from the idyllic pastoral grounds and into the darkened, inner theatre space. Once we take our seats, we race through the winding roads of Tolkien’s saga.

And, yes, it does feel quite frantic. Scenes that would usually be explained, scrupulously over masses of pages – like the forming of the fellowship – have to play out, instead, in a few minutes. Still, Hart draws enchantment from even the most fleeting of scenes. Arwen’s introduction is accompanied by charming harp music and is flushed in fairy-tale purple lighting. The story of Smeagol’s foul transformation into Gollum is projected as a shadowy memory onto a cubby hole in the set. When Gandalf the Grey fights the Balrog in the Battle of the Peak, the fire seems to stretch, alarmingly across the entire stage. Somehow, magic is born using only the simplest of ingredients.

Hart’s production becomes whole in its music. Using the Watermill’s trademark actor-musician style, the folky score is played out onstage, and sounds strange and dissonant. None of the tunes stay with you – I couldn’t hum a single one. But their eerie melodies are a perfect fit for Middle Earth’s rustic sorcery.

Some of the actors, too, perform with panache. As Frodo’s loyal companion Sam, Nuwan Hugh Perera balances innocence with unwavering bravery. Georgia Louise looks golden as she sings, angelically, as the great elf Galadriel. But it is Matthew Bugg’s Gollum who is the most transformative – he contorts and bends his body, hanging off the Watermill’s structure in the shape of a tangled spider. As his inner turmoil begins to surface, his conflicting feelings are spat out like gunfire.

The story gets lost among the visual sparkle. The overall running time drags, but we need to stay in some scenes a little while longer to grasp their full effect. Will this satisfy Tolkien die-hards? Probably not. But, is it worth it for the trip into a mythical otherworld? Absolutely.

ANYA RYAN

The greatest show on Middle-earth

As director Paul Hart’s revival of a musical version of The Lord of the Rings has an alfresco prologue and epilogue in the gardens of Berkshire’s delightful riverside theatre, staff were checking weather apps like players on the last afternoon of a crucial cricket match. There seemed a risk that – in defiance of the storyline of JRR Tolkien’s mid-1950s trilogy, which became three huge early 21st-century movies – the battle for Middle-earth might end as a rain-affected draw.

But, as at the Oval the previous day, meteorological apps proved too apocalyptic and the play began and ended almost on time. Although, under dry skies, the start was briefly delayed by a low-flying helicopter. (Government press officers may be dismayed that the immediate consensus was that it was Rishi Sunak going home.)

First seen in the UK in 2007 at London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane – a 1996-seat theatre – the show is revived at the 220-capacity Watermill. This means that Simon Kenny’s design and Anjali Mehra’s choreography are a theatrical equivalent of stunts designed to find how many people can fit in a Mini.

The creative team ought to be listed in a Guinness book of theatrical records. During the long sections inside the tiny theatre, they cram in battles, orc attacks, treks across land, over mountains or through caves and lavish production numbers involving 20 actors or musicians (several performers also play instruments).

As with the musical version of The Third Man currently running at the Menier in London, speech and score sometimes feel more competitive than complementary. Stephen Sondheim’s rule was that characters start singing when they can no longer speak, but here they more tend to shut up to belt out. The songs, though, move with enjoyable eclecticism through folk via Bollywood to pop, echoing the musical backgrounds of the Indian/Finnish/Anglo-American compositional team of AR Rahman, Värttinä, and Christopher Nightingale.

Matthew Warchus and Shaun McKenna’s dialogue and lyrics locate tonally between the Ring Cycle and Harry Potter, where Tolkien’s quest by a fresh-faced group for a piece of supernatural jewellery sits quite happily. References to the despoiling of the earth by greed and war land more emphatically now than at the premiere. At three hours running time, the adaptation risks irritating Tolkien-holics with bits left out of the books, while dismaying Hobbit-phobics (more my tribe) with some of the stuff that survives.

But the cast is a blast. Louis Maskell’s Frodo dramatises the agonising undeniable destiny of one of children’s literature’s numerous Christ figures. Nuwan Hugh Perera’s Sam and Georgia Louise’s Galadriel bring charming presence and lovely voices. With extraordinary contortions of torso and vocal cords, Matthew Bugg’s Gollum makes a formidable case for the superiority of Equity members over CGI. Peter Marinker’s Gandalf is in an unenviable fight with Ian McKellen’s movie version but finds some space of his own.

The original London run is more known for losing money than winning friends. On a stage about 30 times smaller – with budget presumably reduced proportionately – this spectacle of compression, by aiming small, brings big rewards.

MARK LAWSON

A beautiful, lavish staging of the notorious West End flop

In the wake of the Watermill’s savage, 100 per cent Arts Council cut last year, artistic director Paul Hart could have abandoned hope. But he’s now valiantly fighting back with the venue’s most ambitious under-taking to date: a luscious staging of the epic musical version of The Lord of the Rings.

It’s almost a form of belated rescue-package for the show itself. This was the gargantuan spectacular – with book and lyrics by Shaun McKenna and (its director) Matthew Warchus – that cost £12.5m to mount at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, a record at the time. But it hobbled to a close after little more than a year in 2008, scotching any hope of a Broadway run.

Hart’s big idea is to derive maximum advantage from the homespun, minimalistic nature of the Watermill itself. He harnesses our imaginations in the storytelling, freeing us from the shadow of Peter Jackson’s films in the process, without short-changing us on splendour.

Refashioning the outside garden areas to include food stalls and tables gives us a welcome early taste of Middle-earth. The opening number, on a custom-built wooden stage, sets the scene in the Shire, with a jigging, merry-making company celebrating the 111th birthday of Bilbo Baggins. The audience, and action, then rove inside, where there’s barely enough room to swing a sword or staff. But that compactness, complementing the compression of the trilogy, ensures a thrilling intimacy. As performed by the actor-musician ensemble of 20, the score (by AR Rahman, Finnish folk band Värttinä and Christopher Nightingale) is felt on the pulse.

A wheeze of accordion and scrape of strings, for instance, adds atmosphere to the solemn explications of Peter Marinker’s venerable Gandalf about the all-powerful, baleful ‘ring’ – as Louis Maskell’s hero hobbit Frodo looks on with an innocent, ruminative stare. Aoife O’Dea’s Arwen, the half-elf romantic interest, introduces herself with a round of harp-strumming. And the ferocity of the later battles with the orcs (forbidding in hoodies and gas-masks) is intensified by thunderous drumming. Every movement is impressively finessed, whether it be Bollywood-esque turns in a roof-raising tavern number, or the slinking athleticism of Matthew Bugg’s hissing Gollum.

Not every tune fully earns its place in the three-hour affair – some are too bland. But shrewd lighting, an often mesmeric use of projection, boldly inventive puppetry and a company that embodies the camaraderie the fiction itself celebrates, ensure that any reservations evaporate as the night reaches its enchanting climax. Warchus visited Tolkien’s grave in Oxford to apologise for his temerity. No such apology is required from Hart and co here.

DOMINIC CAVENDISH

It wasn’t going to be easy, fitting a three-hour play with actor/musicians, battles and puppets onto the Watermill’s stage but director Paul Hart’s vision has led to a spectacular triumph.

It starts and ends in the Shire, in the Watermill’s garden (weather permitting). The cast get us into the mood with music and dancing as part of the celebrations for Bilbo’s eleventy first birthday – also the day that Frodo comes of age. Bilbo announces that he’s going travelling one last time and disappears. 17 years later…

We move into the theatre and Frodo has the Ring – the one Ring to rule them all – which Bilbo had left when he disappeared. Gandalf tells Frodo of the power of the Ring and says that it must be destroyed in the fire at Mordor. Frodo decides that he must be the one who takes it and sets off with his henchman Sam and cousins Merry and Pippin to Rivendell.

The journey to Mordor is beset with difficulties from rival Middle Earth factions as well as the Black Riders, Orcs and Gollum, who had once possessed the Ring and is desperate to get it back.

Needless to say, the ending back in the Shire is a happy one.

Designer Simon Kenny’s set is deceptively simple. A bare stage surrounded by wood. He says in the programme “we wanted it to feel as though the whole theatre space had been hewn from a giant piece of wood”. But it’s more complex than it seems with among other things a revolving stage, a moving platform and an opening behind the tree knot high up. The back wall is also used for subtle projections designed by George Reeve.

There are superb puppets designed and made by Charlie Tymms, adding to the sinister atmosphere, including one that drew an audible gasp from the audience on its appearance.

The cast of 20 were excellent. Frodo (Louis Maskell) and Sam (Nuwan Hugh Perera) are central and hold it all together, Frodo out of his comfort zone but determined, Sam brave and loyal. Aaron Sidwell is an authoritative and decisive Aragorn, guiding and helping the Hobbits.

Galadriel, the elven queen, and Arwen sang well and were the love interest for Frodo and Aragorn.

Matthew Bugg makes a perfect Gollum, slimy and wheedling, dominating the scenes he’s in with Frodo and Sam and showing impressive athleticism as he slithers around the stage.

The music was suited to the scenes in various styles, pleasant but not particularly memorable. One of the instruments was a harp – something I’ve not seen on stage at the Watermill before.

This must have been a high-budget production for the Watermill, and it shows. The pace is good, the effects impressive, the choreography (Anjali Mehra) slick. Congratulations to the whole company.

The Lord of the Rings is on until 15th October. Go and see it.

PAUL SHAVE

Magical Middle-earth is just down the road

The Watermill theatre’s ambitious immersive production of The Lord of the Rings, based on JRR Tolkien’s trilogy and adapted by Shaun McKenna and Matthew Warchus is an absolute triumph and Paul Hart’s skilful inventive direction is quite magical.

As we arrived, past the trees and the River Lambourn, we were welcomed into the atmospheric land of Middle earth, past the colourful village stalls into the Watermill’s beautiful garden and invited to join in the celebration of Bilbo Baggins’ 111th birthday, delightfully played by John O’Mahony. We were greeted by the hobbits, who enthusiastically danced and sang and engaged with the audience in playing village green games. But Bilbo had an important announcement to make as he passed the ring to Frodo, a superb subtle performance from Louis Maskell as we were excitedly ushered into the theatre to continue this epic tale.

Simon Kenny’s striking wooden set design with a huge knot in the centre transforms into many spellbinding settings, with stunning projections by George Reeve and dramatic atmospheric lighting designed by Rory Beaton.

Anjali Mehra’s choreography is powerful and exhausting.

Frodo has an epic journey to undertake in order to destroy the powers of the ring and he is joined by his loyal friend Sam (Nuwan Hugh Perera), the faithful Merry (Geraint Downing) and the trusted Pippin (Amelia Gabriel) as they begin their hazardous quest to defeat the evil that is ahead of them. They encounter battles, giant spiders and frightening huge horse puppets designed by Charlie Tymms that stretch into the audience.

The 20 extremely talented actor/musicians all perform with total commitment, playing such a variety of instruments – from harp to French horn – with utter confidence and sing and act with panache.

The score by Christopher Nightingale, AR Rahman and Värrtinä ranges from ballads to large ensemble numbers.

The fight between good and evil is intense. The wise wizard Gandalf (Peter Marinker) struggles to keep his powers under control.

Georgia Louise’s Elf Galadriel is impressive as is Aoife O’Dea as Arwen and Matthew Bugg is outstanding as the athletic evil Gollum.

This is an unmissable, spectacular production. Go!

ROBIN STRAPP