Many people believe that there is no substitute for legitimate theater. There’s just something about the connection a stage actor forms with his audience that no other medium can truly replicate. But in a time when attention spans are short and prices of orchestra seats have soared past the $100 mark, the theater industry is faced with the major problem of luring people out of the multiplex and into the playhouse. For many producers, the answer has been to adapt already familiar stories for the stage. It worked for The Lion King and The Producers, so why not The Lord of The Rings?

As if the homoerotic undertones of hobbit life weren’t suspicious enough, Frodo and friends are now appearing in a musical version of the Tolkien epic, which opened to absolutely savage reviews on March 23rd. The production, which is housed in the Princess of Wales Theater in Toronto, is the most expensive in the history of musical theater, brandishing a price tag of nearly $27 million Canadian. It also boasts a 40-ton rotating, hydraulic stage with 17 elevators, a cast of 70 actors, nearly 500 pieces of armor and 150 weapons, according to a review on Financialtimes.com. As if that’s any substitute for the $93 million of special effects in the films.

Now, I understand that there is a vast appeal to the fantasy trilogy (The Return of the King alone grossed more than $1 billion worldwide) but I’m not sure that there is any major market for Rings in concert. Seeing Kiss live is one thing — they’re just not nearly as good on record as they are in person. But seeing Gandalf singing about the “one ring” in a silky baritone is something quite different. Only the dorkiest of dungeon masters would bother leaving their parents’ basement to see that. Personally, I’d much prefer that the White Wizard stick to the pages of Tolkien’s novel, or remain safely within the frame of Peter Jackson’s camera.

In addition to the crooning of your favorite characters from Middle-Earth, the show also promises to be full of acrobatic fight scenes, like a Cirque du Soleil, only with elves instead of those pretentious French clowns. I don’t know about you, but I have absolutely no desire to see the Battle of Helm’s Deep portrayed through the magic of interpretive dance, nor any other instance of humans and orcs quarreling like they’re the Jets and the Sharks. I won’t even entertain thoughts about the prospect of tap-dancing hobbits or a kick-line full of those creepy tree people.

Producers of the Lord of the Rings musical had been working to bring the piece to the stage for nearly six years, after a musical version of The Hobbit crashed and burned in Berlin. They even got the Ontario government to chip in $3 million to subsidize the cost of production, arguing that it would help renew the city’s fledgling tourism industry, which has not yet recovered from the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003. Now there’s a disease with staying power. Years after its initial appearance, SARS is still threatening the world, only now by justifying mediocre theater. Take that, bird flu.

After its run in Canada, the show is supposedly going on to runs in London, Berlin and perhaps New York by the end of 2007. Broadway has been no stranger to crappy musicals adapted from films like Little Women and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Unfortunately, it’s a trend that will undoubtedly continue into the future, and may lead to even worse concepts for musicals, like Shh!: The Tale of Anne Frank or Don’t Rock the Boat!: The Scott Peterson Story.

I suppose I would appreciate this artistic endeavor more if it was a spoof like Silence!, a musical based on the Jonathan Demme film The Silence of the Lambs, or a caricature of musical theater like Monty Python’s Spamalot. The Rings trilogy is ripe for this kind of parody, and, with the right actors, would be a huge success. Just think of the evil Gollum portrayed by a pill-popping Liza Minnelli, or the noble Aragorn portrayed by a surly Robert Goulet. You can’t argue with the box office power of that tandem.

I have a longstanding theory that when the words “the musical” or “on ice” are tacked on to a title, even the greatest of stories and characters become lame. Considering the overwhelmingly negative response to this recent musical adventure into Middle-Earth, I think it’s safe to say that I’m not alone in my belief. But we shouldn’t underestimate the power of nerds everywhere to line up overnight and make The Lord of the Rings an astonishing success of modern theater. I just hope to God that Frodo won’t be lacing up skates any time soon.

Sean Bartlett, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at [email protected].