For my birthday this year my girlfriend said she was going to take me to see the Lord of the Rings musical playing in Toronto. She checked for tickets every couple of weeks during the year, we wanted decent seats but they always seemed to be so expensive. Luckily, one week in June when she was checking the site, she stumbled across this deal where you get a 3 course dinner and ‘Premium Seats’ for the bargain price of $89! She called right away and was able to reserve us both DD (4th row) seats, which actually end up being 2nd row seats due to the space alloted for the conductor.
Our dinner was at The Strip House just around the corner from the theatre and was absolutely fantastic, I would highly recommend it to anybody looking for a new place to try.
Being a huge fan of the original books and the movies and after the lackluster reviews I was a bit skeptical about how the show would be. Needless to say, I was amazed. The sets and effects were brilliant and overall they interpretted the story very well. Those who only saw the movies may find the end a bit confusing as it does not end with Frodo going to the West, instead, the story of Saruman returning to the Shire is told, a great surprise that had many in the theatre wondering what was going on. For me, the most memorable scene was the Bridge of Khazad-dum, the stage was lit to appear as though it was on fire, then suddenly there was a huge blast of air whipping past us with pieces of tissue paper as ash. It felt like and earthquake was happenening beneath our seats. All of this was compounded by our proximity to the stage.
Overall I thought the show was very well done, my only disappointment was that the voice of the actor who played Gandalf was very weak, almost to the point of sounding scared most of the time. Mind you, he had very large shoes to fill after the example set by Sir Ian McKellen.
If you get a chance to see it before it closes on Sept. 3rd, I highly recommend it.
