We went to see Lord of the Rings last night. No no, not the movie. The musical.

Critics have not been kind to it. The production reportedly cost $27 million to put on, but the show is closing after less than 1 year. A normal show like this in Toronto lasts around 3 years or so (ie: Les Miserables, Lion King, Miss Saigon, Phantom of the Opera, Mamma Mia...). So this production has been a disaster for the Mirvish Brothers (David and Ed Mirvish who own several theaters in this city).

So I went in with low expectations, but secretly hoping the show would be good. Perhaps the critics have been overly harsh. It was worth giving the show a chance. So we went.

The show started at 7:30. At around the 7:45 mark I wanted to leave. The evening was still young, and I could have done something more productive with my time, like dusting the top of my kitchen cabinets.

Overall, the show had some good moments. The actor that played Gollum has been getting good reviews, and is one of the few (or perhaps only) Toronto actors chosen to be in the London cast. He was ok.  But the weak spots definitely overshadowing the few good ones.

But it's hard to put a finger on what went wrong. The concept certainly sounded strange when I first read about it - turn the Lord of the Rings movies into a stage production... There were of course going to be obstacles to climb. The movie is filled with special effects, and so how could that be translated onto the stage? Plus the three LOTR movies are 12 hours combined. How are they going to cram the story into 2 hours without losing important bits?

Neither of those obstacles were completely overcome. Where in the movie you had huge special effects battles between hundreds of thousands of virtual characters, in the musical you have 20 people running around on a stage. The fight scenes just didn't work. And in terms of length, it felt too long in some places and too short in others.

I'll tell you what I did like, however. The fight between Gandalf and the Balrog. The orcs - on springy stilts no less. The black horsemen (Nazgul). The evil spider Shelob. Some of the characters were great (particularly the evil ones). But since the wizards, elves and hobbits carry the play, we don't get enough of those good parts.

What would have been interesting is if they did something similar to The Lion King - not try to remake the story for the stage, but instead do a new story based on the original one. I guess J.R.R. Tolkein did such a good job detailing Middle Earth that there is not much of the story left to be told. What if Frodo kept the ring? What if Sam stole it from him and went off on his own? I don' know - I'm not a playright.

It needed something... But I don't know what.