TOLKEIN MUSICAL SINGING THE BLUES

04-06-2007

Stirrer blogger Damien Doran can say “I was there… in the West End, last Wednesday, when the show DIDN’T go on. A preview performance of the musical Lord Of The Rings came to a premature end because an actor got his legs caught in the stage machinery.

Last Wednesday I took my son to London for a big day out to see the new Lord of the Rings Musical at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.

It's billed as the most expensive theatrical event in history, costing £50m, has the largest cast in living memory, and lasts over 3 hours.

It’s a very spectacular setting, with a thick forest spreading from the stage right into the theatre itself which creates a real feel of Tolkien’s world.

The whole sense of event is built up by the cast who interact with the arriving audience before the start of theplay which, thankfully, is not all song. Its highly energetic stuff with some great special effects including a disappearing Bilbo Baggins.

A centrepiece is a huge revolving stage with several hydraulic lifts which move as the actors rush around. It’s the kind of thing where your mum would yell at you to “slow down or someone will get hurt!”

And so it proved. Some 30 minutes in,just as the elves, hobbits and other assorted creatures were dashing off stage, the whole thing came to a juddering halt to the cries of “my leg my leg” from one of the actors.

I don’t know much about the story of the Lord of the Rings, but I was pretty sure this wasn’t part of it.

Immediately an announcement was made over the PA system that there was a “technical problem”. That's theatre-speak forthe factthattheactor Adam Salter had trapped his leg in the stage.

Down came the safety curtain and we wereall encouraged to go to the bar while it was sorted out and Adam was whisked off to hospital.

Eventually we returned to our seats tobe told by the producer that, contrary to the old showbiz tradition, the show wouldn’t go on - news which was greeted with a sympathetic and generous round of applause.

We were given leaflets explaining how to get our money back and the audience drifted off into the early evening.

The play was cancelled for the next two nights while they resolved the problem.

Those of us who missed out on the rest of the performance can only imagine the spectacle that would have unfolded in the next two and half hours; but at the time when we should have been giving the cast a standing ovation, we were back home in Brum.

The good news is that if anyone was feeling guilty for telling Adam before the show to “break a leg” - he didn’t.

The Lord of The Rings - Theatre Royal website - click here in a runic way