There’s a moment in the Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring film that you probably remember (it was dramatized in all the trailers). The One Ring, flying into the air and then landing on Frodo’s finger. In the film, that moment is filled with tension, with Howard Shore’s score providing an air of menace. But you might be surprised to know that in the book by J.R.R. Tolkien, that dramatic scene where Frodo wears the Ring for the first time is markedly different. It involves singing and dancing.

In the Fellowship book, Frodo entertains the rowdy patrons at a bar by singing a song, a silly little ditty about a man who lives on the moon who comes down from the sky to Middle Earth to have a drink, and meets a fiddle-playing cat and a dancing cow. As the patrons in the bar cheer him on, Frodo even begins to dance, so hard that he jumps into the air, causing the Ring to fall out of his pocket and onto his finger. The mood in the scene abruptly shifts. Mirth gives way to mayhem.

As someone who had read Lord of the Rings at 13 (and who now sports an Elvish tattoo), I hadn’t thought about that part of the book in years—having replaced it in my head with the more sinister (and some might say thematically more consistent) moment from the films. So I was pleasantly surprised recently when, while watching The Lord of the Rings: A Musical Tale at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, I saw that moment dramatized on the stage. Frodo (played with such sweetness by Spencer Davis Milford) sang the song "The Cat and the Moon" with such merriment and joy that it only became more stark when the One Ring slipped on his finger and the music abruptly stopped.

It was then I realized why, contrary to many skeptics, it was not only an inspired idea to turn Lord of the Rings into a musical. It was positively Tolkien-esque.

The Lord of the Rings musical adaptation has a somewhat fraught history. In 2002, following the success of the first Rings film, producer Kevin Wallace teamed up with film producer Saul Zaentz to create a stage version of the books. Having worked at Really Useful Group, Wallace was an expert on megamusicals while Zaentz was an expert on Rings—he held the stage rights to Lord of the Rings and had produced the Ralph Bakshi 1978 animated film adaptation.

The Rings musical had a score by A.R. Rahman, Värttinä, and Christopher Nightingale, and lyrics and book by Shaun McKenna and Matthew Warchus. It first premiered in 2006 in Toronto, before transferring the next year to the West End. That original production was notoriously rocky. Featuring a cast of 65, the emphasis was on spectacle—including orcs who walked on stilts, elves that spun on aerial silks, 17 different lifts (which didn’t always work), and a runtime of 3.5 hours. It was one of the most expensive musicals ever made in Toronto and London, costing $25 million. It ran just a few months in Toronto and in the West End, and was overall financially and critically unsuccessful.

Like the One Ring when it sank to the bottom of the River Anduin, since 2007, the musical adaptation has passed into legend—one of those cautionary tales about the follies of spectacle and trying to squeeze a sprawling trilogy into one musical when the films already did it better. Then, in 2023, an artist reached into the waters and pulled the Rings musical out of obscurity. 

Director Paul Hart oversaw a stripped-down version of Rings at Watermill Theatre, a small regional theatre in the U.K. which does shows in a former water mill. In the production, the actors played their own instruments, no attempt was made to create short hobbits or tall Ents, and the show was cut to two hours and 45 minutes—it was hobbit-sized while the previous production was wizard-sized.

Most crucially, instead of opening with a prologue from Arwen (similar to how the first film opens), this new production begins with a pre-show where the hobbits dance around a maypole to live music. They then enter the house from the lobby (singing all the way), before leading the audience in a singalong of “Happy birthday” to Bilbo Baggins (Rick Hall, a dead ringer for Ian Holm). In this new version, the hobbits act as narrators, re-telling the story of the One Ring. As Hart tells Playbill in a previous interview, his was “a version that was really focused on the storytelling. Hobbits love telling stories, and they love passing on stories through generations, so the idea of them telling the most extraordinary story you could ever imagine makes a lot of sense.”

He was right. The Watermill version was critically acclaimed and popular with audiences. It’s now embarking on a world tour, which includes its U.S. debut at Chicago Shakespeare Theater (through September 1) and a stop in New Zealand (where the films were shot). Producer William Bennett tells me they want to bring the show to New York, though no plans have been made.

It’s good timing; Lord of the Rings as a property is back in the zeitgeist.

Currently, the Amazon Prime Video series Rings of Power, a prequel of sorts, is about to premiere its second season. And there have been announcements of two more Middle Earth films, The War of the Rohirrim and The Hunt for Gollum (with more being possible if these first two films succeed). 

Screen and stage have different strengths and limitations. The Lord of the Rings films captured the epic scale of Tolkien’s world and the transportiveness nature of his world-building, something that no theatre experience can match, no matter how mega of a musical it is. That was why it was smart for this version of the Rings musical to focus on something different and unique to theatre as a medium. It captures the meditative nature of Tolkien’s writing. Anyone who has read the books after seeing the films will be surprised to find out that Tolkien devoted far fewer pages to big battle scenes than he does to songs, monologues, and descriptions of scenery and landscape. What better medium to bask in beautiful words than theatre, a medium where audiences are trained to sit and listen to words without needing spectacle?

The narrative in the book also regularly paused so that the characters could sing a song. The characters in Middle Earth sing as they walk, they sing as they sit around a campfire, they sing when they say goodbye, they even sing when they’re scared (as Sam does after Frodo is captured in Return of the King). Because Tolkien was inspired by the epic poems of Beowulf, and the oral traditions of storytelling, songs are an integral part of Lord of the Rings. In fact, in Tolkien’s writings, the world was created because the God Eru sang a song (a Silmarillion reference for any uber-fans reading this).

So you can say that Lord of the Rings has always been a musical. And in the stage show, the songs function almost in the same way as the songs do in the book: They illuminate character, they convey emotions, and they’re just a plain fun time. It does break musical theatre rules of storytelling, though I doubt Tolkien fans would object after hearing the professor’s own phrases set to music.

The Rings musical also strips back the special effects and focuses much less on epic battles (its three big battles are condensed into one that lasts only all of three minutes). The effects that are used, mainly puppetry and projections, are thrilling and earned—watching Shelob the giant spider slowly appear and tower over Frodo is a skin-crawling moment.

The lack of spectacle means more focus is placed on the songs, the dialogue, and the characters. When Gollum (played by a crowd-pleasing Tony Bozzuto) sings the reprise of “Now and For Always,” the first time he sings in the show, the audience cheered at that moment of character progression.

This season on Broadway is filled with musical adaptations of famous books. But as any literary fan understands, there is no such thing as a perfect adaptation. Even the Lord of the Rings films have been critiqued by fans—to this day, I am unhappy with how Peter Jackson oversimplified the characters of Denethor and Gimli (nine hours of screen time is plenty to give every pivotal character nuanced characterizations if you just made the Battle of Helm’s Deep 10 minutes shorter). The films have also made Lord of the Rings synonymous with epic battles, which I’m not sure Tolkien would've been happy with—he fought in the trenches in World War I and wrote Rings to caution against needless fighting.

Similarly, there are flaws in the Rings musical. The shrinking of the three books down into one musical means that the story feels extremely rushed—even incoherent to those who aren't familiar with it. There were also moments that would have been more vividly portrayed if there had been a bit more money for effects. For instance, Treebeard and the Ents ended up being disembodied voices and bass notes on a horn (with a couple of sad leaves falling into the house). It was passable but there could have been more; the March of the Ents could have felt more visceral (and immersive, per the show’s marketing) if leaves had rained over the audience. It was also a missed opportunity to not set the “One Ring to Rule Them All” poem to music in some form.

Be it stage or screen, the rules of a successful adaptation remain the same: Does it reveal new dimensions to the original work while capturing its essence? The Rings musical captures the heart of what makes the books so beloved: the text and all the magical possibilities within those words. For me, sitting in that theatre surrounded by 800 other people, the show brought back vivid memories of sitting at home, reading Lord of the Rings for the first time and the images that Tolkien’s words inspired in my head.

In the Rings musical, when Sam and Frodo are in Mordor, they sing a song about storytelling, and about what kind of tale will be told about their adventures.

Tell us an old tale we know.
Tell of adventures strange and rare
Never to change
Ever to share
Stories we tell will cast their spell
Now and for always.

Why do we tell stories and retell them? What's the point of revivals? Because sometimes, we need to revisit a story we thought we knew, so that it can enchant us again while teaching us new lessons. It's why some Broadway fans have seen shows like Hadestown dozens of times.

Over the years, the name Lord of the Rings has become synonymous with epic battles and magic. What the Lord of the Rings stage musical provides is the opportunity to experience Tolkien's tale in a new medium, and in doing so, see it with fresh eyes and be reminded of what the story truly is about. It's not about elves; it's about characters of different races putting aside their animosity for the greater good, the strong standing up to defend the weak, and how even the humblest person can change the world. 

The best, most timeless stories can withstand many reiterations. And what has kept artists coming back to Tolkien is the inherent optimism found in his stories. That even when the world is bleak (like it can feel sometimes now), there is always hope if we stand together and sing. Now and for always.

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Photos: Lord of the Rings - A Musical Tale at Chicago Shakespeare Theater

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