Irish theatre producer Kevin Wallace, who’d worked for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group, partnered with Saul Zaentz, the Oscar-winning American film producer (for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus and The English Patient) who held the rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. In fact, it was one of the biggest commercial flops in West End history.ĭevelopment for the show began in around 2002, shortly after the first film in the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, took a whopping $887.8 million at the box office and made Tolkien a seriously hot property. The theatrical incarnation of Tolkien’s novels has a much more chequered history than the mega-successful Peter Jackson film series. That definitely wasn’t the case first time around. ![]() Add in the distinctly hobbit-y surrounds of the Watermill, and Peter Hart’s intimate, actor-musician production could well be a summer smash – and a precious money-spinner. The show has excellent creative pedigree, with a score by Oscar and Grammy winner AR Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire), Finnish folk band Värttinä, and Christopher Nightingale (orchestrator on musicals Matilda and Ghost). Certainly the venue could use an epic hit after the deeply unfair 100 per cent cut of its Arts Council funding – cruelty to rival Sauron. ![]() One musical to rule them all? Well, that’s the plan at the Watermill Theatre, the pastoral gem in West Berkshire, which has just opened its revival of the infamous Lord of the Rings stage musical.
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