pmsumner

Lord of the Rings on Stage. Yeah. I can't quite decide what to think. We got quite lucky, we got box seats (boxes at the back of the auditorium) for a not-bad price, which was good.

It started impressively, though immediately you know that the story is going to be cut to shreds in order to fit all 3 books into a 180 minute show. It's less of a musical than I had expected. There is singing, there is LOTS of music, but the music is more incidental, more mood-music than traditional "musical". What music there was, I enjoyed. I might get hold of the OCR if one exists.

The dance... oh my the dance. There's lots of it. Everything is enacted through dance, and that I had problems with. I wasn't expecting a contemporary dance show, though that's definitely what it is. I didn't not enjoy the dance, but I didn't enjoy it enough to care.

Unfortunately we discovered fairly early on that the box seats suffer from a major disadvantage. You can't see high above the stage - it's blocked by the upper circle. As the stage rises and falls, you lose visibility of what's happening high up, and Laura Michelle Kelly's entrance was completely invisible to us. We were fairly miffed as they weren't advertised by the box-office as being restricted view nor did it say they were restricted on the tickets. I'm yet to decide whether writing to the theatre and bitching at them will achieve anything as though the tickets weren't that expensive, they really weren't that cheap.

Avenue Q was (once more) a hoot. Daniel Boys was excellent as Princeton/Rod, Rebecca Lock was yet another delicious and lovely Lucy The Slut/Kate Monster. We really enjoyed the show, and I maintain that it really helps to know the music of most musicals before you go.