A musical adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) sounds a lot like the set up for a Saturday Night Live comedy skit: tap dancing Orcs, perhaps; a plaintive song for Gollum to sing to the ‘precious’; chorus lines of hairy hobbit feet kicking in unison? Richard Wagner achieved the sublime with a grandiose tale of dwarves, dragons, and a magic golden band in his Der Ring des Nibelungen, so maybe it is possible. Sadly, after three seemingly interminable hours and a lot of questionable stagecraft, this version – too incompetent to be moving and not quite camp enough to be a hoot – is a slog worthy of a trip to Mordor. At least the SNL skit would have been mercifully short.

It opens with the forced bonhomie and faux ‘Oirish’ backslapping that worked so well for the musical Once (2011) but feels here like the corporate cheerleading you find in cold-call marketing departments. It is Bilbo Baggins’s (Laurence Coy) ‘eleventy first’ birthday celebration. He has gathered the whole of Hobbiton to celebrate, including his nephew Frodo (Rarmian Newton). In the middle of the party, Bilbo disappears with the help of a magic ring of invisibility, to the astonishment of his neighbours. Of course, this ring turns out to be ‘the one ring’, created by the Dark Lord Sauron to enslave the peoples of Middle Earth. The task of destroying it falls on Frodo, who – with the help of the wizard Gandalf (Terence Crawford) and fellow hobbits Samwise (Wern Mak), Merry (Jeremi Campese), and Pippin (Hannah Buckley) – must cross into the hellish landscape of Mordor all the way to the fires of Mount Doom.

Tolkien’s seminal fantasy novel drew on his experiences in France during World War I, and this epic battle against the forces of evil has an undeniable narrative heft and emotional resonance, even apart from his expansive and richly detailed world-building. A theatrical adaptation could take two broadly disparate approaches: either throw enormous resources at the staging – something akin to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2016) – and attempt to recreate some of the textural wonder of Tolkien’s intricate vision, or scale down and use the intimate language of the rough theatre to conjure the fireside yarn, of old tales and songs ‘and secrets hidden under brambles’.

The Lord of the Rings – A Musical Tale (that subtitle is telling, as this is far more a play with music than a fully realised musical adaptation) falls uncomfortably between these approaches, being neither truly spectacular nor charmingly homespun. Some set pieces work well, but so much of the staging is confused and graceless, cheap where it needs to look expensive and clunky where it needs precision and ingenuity. A large part of the problem comes from the design (Simon Kenny), which takes the clichés of the genre and slathers them around the playing space with enthusiasm but very little sense of acumen or artistry. Vaguely Celtic greens and browns for the hobbits, dark blues for the elves – who look disturbingly like members of a doomsday cult and wave their hands around in runic ecstasy – and uninspired white for the wizards. Charlie Tymms’s puppets, including some chilling Ringwraiths and a deliciously malevolent giant spider, are wonderfully effective. But far too much of the production’s visual imagination is plodding and repetitive.

An act of abridgement on this scale – depending on the edition, the book has at least 1200 pages, and Peter Jackson’s film versions run at more than nine staggering hours – means that some things are inevitably jettisoned and others condensed or summarised beyond recognition. The characters of Théoden and Denethor seem to have been combined to desultory effect, and Faramir and Éowyn are gone altogether. Some plot points are so perfunctory – Aragorn (Rob Mallett) pulling a broken sword from his rucksack to indicate a key lineage, or Gandalf’s sudden resurrection after death – they draw unintended laughs. While ellipses are understandable, and might have made for a punchy and streamlined rendition, the tedious and anodyne songs fail to advance the plot and kill the momentum at every turn.

Laurence Boxhall as Gollum (photograph by Daniel Boud)

Performances are uneven. Newton makes a likeable enough hero as Frodo, and Mak is a delightful foil as best mate Sam, while Crawford as Gandalf and Ian Stenlake as Saruman bring dignity and gravitas to the rival magicians. Jemma Rix – dressed in a hideous gold lamé pant suit worthy of red-carpet Oscar de la Renta circa 1982 – is given little to do other than look ethereal, and Stefanie Caccamo is saddled with some stiff and colourless characterisation as Aragorn’s elven lover Arwen. Laurence Boxhall throws himself into the part of Gollum with enthusiasm and commitment, but his interpretation is far too closely modelled on Andy Serkis’s in the films. Whenever the character has to sing, the effect is utterly ridiculous.

This constant winking to Jackson’s cinematic world is problematic in a larger sense, too. What is the purpose of a theatrical version of a well-worn story if it’s going to take all its visual and narrative cues from the monstrously profitable film franchise? Director Paul Hart throws a lot of stage effects at the saga but never finds a genuine theatrical language worthy of it. Ritual, song, and ceremony are at the heart of Tolkien’s beloved work – it holds an almost canonical place in the lore of high fantasy, something akin to Homer or the Brothers Grimm – but they are employed here with a kind of laziness and corporate knowing. It is no surprise to learn that the show is licensed from Middle-Earth Enterprises, which owns the rights to the films, video games, ‘consumer products and location-based experiences’. In the end, The Lord of the Rings – A Musical Tale feels less like the set up for an extended joke, and more like a cynical act of merchandising.

The Lord of the Rings – A Musical Tale (Comedy Theatre) continues until 8 June 2025. Performance attended: May 1.