Toronto to host debut of musical 'Lord of the Rings'

The much-anticipated stage adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy will have its world premiere in Toronto, producers announced in London Tuesday.

The $27-million show, co-produced by Toronto's Mirvish Productions, will open in March 2006 at the Princess of Wales Theatre with a largely Canadian cast, said producer Kevin Wallace, a former Andrew Lloyd Webber collaborator who produced Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar and Sunset Boulevard.

With a cast of 50 and elaborate staging, the audience will be "plunged into the events as they happen," said director Matthew Warchus. "We have not attempted to pull the novel towards the standard conventions of musical theatre, but rather to expand those conventions so that they will accommodate Tolkien's material."

The show had been scheduled to debut in London this spring to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the publication of the complete trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. However, there was no theatre available to accommodate the massive and technically complex three-hour production, producers said. The London debut is now set for fall 2006.

The musical will feature a book and lyrics by Warchus and British playwright Shaun McKenna. The music is by Bollywood composer A.R. Rahman, responsible for the U.K. hit Bombay Dreams, and Finnish group Varttina. Others involved include Saul Zaentz, the producer behind such films as One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and The English Patient, and Michael Cohl, producer of Spamalot.

In development for the past four years, the show's original cost estimate of about $20 million was touted as the most expensive in the history of British theatre.

Tolkien's epic has been the subject of a revival of late, thanks to Peter Jackson's award-winning film trilogy, which has grossed more than $3 billion US worldwide. The final instalment swept the 2004 Academy Awards, including best picture. The Canadian Children's Opera Chorus produced an opera adaptation of Tolkien's The Hobbit last summer and Toronto-born composer Howard Shore, who created the score for Jackson's films, adapted his music into a symphony work entitled The Lord of the Rings: A Symphony in Six Movements for Orchestra and Chorus. The piece has been performed to sold-out audiences around the world.

The musical's Canadian debut is a welcome shot in the arm for Toronto's theatre industry, which has been in the doldrums since a 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome sent the city's tourism industry into a tailspin.

Since the SARS outbreak, Toronto-based productions of the multiple Tony Award-winning shows Hairspray and The Producers have closed earlier than expected because of weak ticket sales.