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Adventure in Berlin
Fiction and life come together in an imaginative stage adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's beloved tales
BY EMILY MITCHELL/BERLIN

Bilbo could have stayed quietly at home, smoking a pipe outside the round green door of his hobbit hole. Luckily for millions of readers, a taste for adventure--and a mysterious gray-bearded wizard named Gandalf--lured him from his domestic tranquillity into the world of Middle-Earth and dangerous encounters with strange and terrifying creatures. Like the little hero of The Hobbit, Viennese-born composer Bernd Stromberger, 38, set off on a perilous adventure, and he too is surrounded by dwarfs, elves and fearsome orcs. The difference is that Stromberger's Middle-Earth is not confined within the pages of a book, but is brought to life on the stage--inside a huge tent pitched on a busy Berlin street.

 Adapting J.R.R. Tolkien's beloved books The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings into a musical drama with dancers and acrobats has long been Stromberger's dream. Back in 1993 he sent the Tolkien estate in Britain recordings of three songs he wrote for the show, and received a swift--and encouraging--reply. Within six months he had completed and recorded all the music for the show. Two weeks later he had a green light from the estate for a German-language production. The result is Lord of the Rings, showing in Berlin in an open-ended run.

 The original idea for the $40 million musical was to envelop the audience in a fantasy world. Trees painted on the inside of the tent give the illusion of a looming forest and six entrances through the seating areas bring Tolkien's mythical creatures into close proximity with viewers. For a scene in the forest of Mirkwood, actors dressed as fantastical animals roam through the audience. Bilbo (Bruno Grassini) and the dwarfs, led by Thorin Oakenshield (James Sbano), wander through the crowd on their journey to steal the treasure guarded by the dragon Smaug. One side of the stage has a shallow pool for Gollum, a slimy creature with large webbed feet and eyes as big as headlights.

 In bringing Stromberger's dream to reality, life unfortunately imitated fiction. Just as Bilbo faced hardship and loss, the Lord of the Rings cast and crew were beset by trouble and tragedy. In October of last year, Italian set designer Rinaldo Olivieri died of a heart attack; his son Jacopo, the show's costume designer, finished supervising the scenery. Not long afterward, the American actor playing Gandalf was seriously injured by a streetcar. Previews and the premiere were rescheduled after it became clear that the technical elements would not be ready on time. It seemed as if the Dark Lord of Tolkien's tales had somehow cast an evil spell on the production.

 American choreographer Denny Berry invented movements for each type of creature, directing the actors playing dwarfs to assume a wide stance and a low-to-the-ground, swaying walk, while the sleek elves and their queen moved with straight-backed elegance. The tent was unfinished when she and her singers and dancers finally got onstage. They had rehearsed for two months and struggled to adjust their performances for the larger space. The actors' task, as Berry explained, "was to be bigger than life without passing over into caricature."

 Once the cast was working on the stage, Berry could add the heart-stopping turns of the Russian acrobats, who perform--without a net--high above the stage. London-born fight director Alister Mazzotti discovered that several of the weighty and overscaled axes and swords were dangerous, and he had to restage the fiercer combats to keep actors away from the pyrotechnic effects that send jets of flame bursting through the stage floor. With just days before the opening, the Lord of the Rings company labored to incorporate the many complicated technical elements into the show.

 When opening night came in early December, Berlin reviewers were a tough audience, criticizing Stromberger's adaptation and an acoustic system that tended to swallow the words of songs. Berry's choreography, Olivieri's imaginative cartoonish costumes and the spectacular lighting effects were praised, however, and the Berliner Morgenpost found the show and its "amiable quaintness" pleasing. Meanwhile, audiences keep turning up to share in Bilbo's adventure. The Dark Lord's spell finally appears to be broken. END