Toronto's stage adaptation of The Lord of the Rings will not only transform the entire inside of the Princess of Wales Theatre into Middle-Earth, but it is being billed as the city's biggest hope to restore its theatre and tourism industries to their pre-SARS financial health.
Mirvish Productions will begin performances of the mammoth, three-hour, $27-million production next February, having just signed the final agreement yesterday giving Toronto exclusive rights to stage the musical first. Originally destined for a venue in London, the creative team was said to have been unable to find a theatre large enough and available early next year.
But theatre impresario David Mirvish indicated yesterday that landing the show was also a matter of putting together an enticing package of logistical and financial incentives, including a $3-million loan from the province of Ontario.
“We've never seen major shows actually start in cities outside of London and New York before, so this is quite a coup,” Mirvish said. “But part of it is finding the perfect theatre.”
David Mirvish announces the stage version of the Lord of the Rings at The Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto, Ont. (Kevin Van Paassen/The Globe and Mail)
The Princess of Wales Theatre will undergo eight weeks of large-scale renovation, which will include transforming the audience area into a Middle-Earth forest and tearing apart the concrete stage front in order to make it into a giant sloping tree trunk.
“There are only three theatres in London that could accommodate this show, and we don't know when any of them will become available. So the show could open eight months after [it does in] Toronto in London — [or] it might take a year or two years. We don't know,” Mirvish said.
With a cast of more than 65 actors, the production will include an assortment of elaborate costumes and actors on stilts, evoking some of Cirque du Soleil's aesthetic, as well as giant props. Shelob, the enormous spider that is central to The Lord of the Rings's final book and that nearly kills Frodo the hobbit, will stretch across the entire 40-foot stage.
The production's otherworldly set and costume design will rely on depicting characters such as the sinister Black Riders and the tree-like Ents, rather than trying to build gigantic Tolkienesque landscapes in the theatre.
As director Matthew Warchus suggested, the stage production will have to rely largely on the power of subtle suggestion in recreating such exotic scenes as the gleaming city of Minas Tirith and the dark land of Mordor.
For instance, opening yesterday's tightly choreographed press conference, which felt like a gala performance in its own right, a sinister Black Rider was a large construction of skeletal, wooden-like beams. It was lit as much to accentuate its shadows, as to show off its actual form.
The music, at least judging by the few songs previewed yesterday, is a combination of Nordic folk tunes (as composed by the Finish contemporary folk group Varttina) and lush, Eastern-influenced passages (by A. R. Rahman, a popular composer of Indian film soundtracks) devolving into catchy, Josh Groban-like balladry. The audience of journalists, tourism people and other guests applauded heartily.
Ultimately, the production is being promoted as a major draw for tourists, attracting potentially many thousands of visitors for years, depending on the length of its open-ended run. According to producer Kevin Wallace, formerly an in-house producer for Andrew Lloyd Webber's production company, a London production wouldn't open until the end of 2006 and there will be no other North American production for at least 18 months after the official Toronto gala opening on March 23, 2006. (Preview performances are to begin Feb. 2. Tickets will go on sale mid-May.) In addition to the $3-million Ontario government loan, the trade and travel group Tourism Toronto is committed to provide $3-million in marketing support. And although Mirvish said the production will have “no problem” raising the rest of the money needed, he is campaigning hard for a $3-million loan from the federal government, which he described as crucial for financing a production of this size.
“The GST on tickets will bring them [Ottawa] $115,000 a week back. So if they gave us the $3-million as a loan, which we would try to pay back out of our profits, even if we never paid it back, they would make money off the taxes they would collect on jobs that would not have been created otherwise,” Mirvish said.
Michael Cohl, the concert promoter who helped put together the massive Rolling Stones SARS concert in 2003, was one of the first people Mirvish contacted to see if it were feasible to bring the show to Toronto. Cohl, one of the co-producers of the show, describes it as an extravaganza to finally erase the financial downturn caused by the SARS scare.
Just as most people hearing the news about the production have been leery about whether the grandiose epic can be effectively reproduced on-stage in three, one-hour acts, Mirvish was initially skeptical too. He originally didn't even want to invest in a London production.
“I'm told about almost all the major shows that go on around the world, and I'm usually invited to look at them. And I received an invitation in October to look at this as an investor in London,” he said.
“I couldn't imagine how you could stage this. I just thought this would be impossible to do. So even though I knew that the team was extraordinarily talented, I really sent my people over as a courtesy to say no.” Instead, Mirvish's team was so excited about the production that they quickly lobbied to get the production moved to Toronto.
Yesterday, Mirvish was philosophical about the financial risk. The show is twice the cost of any show he has ever produced. But ultimately, he said the goal is to create a production that “brings all of us together as a community and means something to all of us.”
So get used to it: If Mirvish succeeds, Toronto could be known the world over as the home of Middle-Earth for a long, long time.
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