[Ah yes. Back in the day when you had to note that The
Fellowship of the Ring is part one of The Lord of the Rings. I’d been hearing
for about four years at that point that Peter Jackson, director of my beloved
Dead Alive, was trying his hand at the trilogy. I thought that was ballsy of
him, and I hoped it would work out. By the time I wrote this review, I had all
but given up on Jackson. I decided that it wasn’t happening. (Whoops!) I love
the Lifeline Theatre. I’ve seen a handful of their productions, and they’re
always intimate and outlandish. If you live in Chicago, I highly recommend you
check them out. This was in the Elmhurst College Leader, April 10, 2000.]
A few years back, the Lifeline Theatre, 6912 N. Glenwood Ave.,
Chicago, adapted a play that was
considered completely unadaptable for the stage. Yet their performance of The
Fellowship of the Ring, the first in JRR Tolkien’s trilogy, The Lord of the
Rings, was a surprise success. Now they’re back with part two of the trilogy,
The Two Towers, and again, they have succeeded in performing a seemingly
unadaptable story.
Unfortunately, this time Lifeline dispensed with the little
people who played the hobbits in the first play. The only actor reprising his
role from the first play is Dale Inghram, one of the few full-sized people to
play a hobbit. Last time he was an excellent Sam Gamgee, but this time, while
retaining a lot of the humble, simple-minded hobbit in his calmer moods, has
also gained a very hyper style that goes against everything Sam should be.
Another actor returning from the first play is Patrick
Blashill. However, this time he plays Frodo Baggins, while last time he was
both Bilbo and Gimli. Blashill is successful at capturing the determination and
good will of Frodo.
In fact, all the actors are good for their characters
(especially Heath Corson’s portrayal of Wormtongue, who was appropriately very
slimy and low to the ground), but not all of them actually resemble the
characters. As said above, there were no little people, but that’s not the
extent of it. Charles Picard, who played Gandalf, did not even have a beard. While
he played the role excellently, capturing his will to do good with the
underlying anger perfectly, he certainly didn’t look the part. However, he also
plays two other characters, which requires quick changes, so while the lack of
appropriate appearance is understandable, it’s also kind of a let down.
The only actor who really looks his part is Phil Timberlake,
who plays Legolas, the elf. He also plays Gollum perfectly, with quite possibly
the best voice for the job since Gail Chugg’s Gollum for the Mind’s Eye radio
dramatization. He also captures Gollum’s slithery ways perfectly, lulling the
audience into really liking him so that everyone, even the ones who have read
the books, feel betrayed by his giving Frodo and Sam to Shelob, the spider.
The Lifeline uses a puppet to deal with the size and
presence of Shelob, and they do a pretty good job, considering what they had to
work with. The only objection that can be leveled against them for the Shelob
scene is the slow-motion fight scene between the spider and Sam. It really just
looked too stupid, which was the problem with many of the fights from the first
play. There is a plus to the new fight scenes, though—at least this time they
use weapons. In The Fellowship of the Ring, the actors just pretended to have
swords while fighting in slo-mo.
The best fight was the first fight of the play when Brian
Amidei as Boromir fights an army of orcs to protect Merry (Corson) and Pippen
(John Ferrick). No slow-motion here—just brutal fighting. They used screens to
show silhouettes of orcs (probably cardboard stands) in order to convey the
idea that there are a bunch of them surrounding Boromir. They use the effect
more than once to show the encampment of orcs and their marching army and other
moments, as well as to show the riders of Rohan when they come to battle the
orcs.
They also make use of puppets other than Shelob. When Gollum
is first introduced, he is a puppet swimming to capture passing fish made of
neon foam. The puppet itself looks kind of stupid, and the actors didn’t handle
it well. They did better with the puppets of Merry and Pippen when they met
Treebeard (played by Amidei, who, with the sound effects on his voice, was
perfect for the job). The puppets looked ridiculous, which was mainly why they worked
so well. The Lifeline has done better with puppets in the past, though, with
their adaption of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in which the actors were obviously
so skilled in puppetry that they made the puppets look like real living beings.
They also use models to describe the battle at Helm’s Deep,
showing first a pretty good model of the fortress as well as a Battle Masters-ish layout of the battlefield.
While actually seeing the battle is much preferable, they do an excellent job
of conveying what actually happened in the battle.
The only other real problem is something they can’t
help—their budget. The swords aren’t real swords—they’re metal bars. Clubs are
aluminum baseball bats, and while the costuming looks good, it is obvious that
the wardrobe was put together from scraps. The solution is simple: throw it all
into suspension of disbelief. After all, this is an adaption of The Two Towers,
something which requires a lot of suspension of disbelief itself.
All in all, James Sie (who directed the first play) and
Karen Tarjan did an excellent job of adapting the play, and Ned Mochel (who
played Aragorn in the first play) did a wonderful job of directing The Two
Towers. It’s going to play all the way through May 7, so see it. Besides, where
else are you going to see an adaption of Tolkien’s greatest work? See it before
you lose the chance, for it will never come again.
For more information, call The Lifeline Theatre (773)
761-4477.
