Theatre

Who wouldn’t be excited to be offered the job of choreographing ‘Billy Elliot’, the celebration of dance that has seen scores of young boys embracing an art form once dismissed as sissy? On the other hand, apart from the money, who wouldn’t shirk from doing the same for ‘The Lord of the Rings’? JRR Tolkein’s Middle Earth epic may have thousands of devoted followers but it’s improbable material for a musical and is hardly likely to have dance at its core as the hobbits and their cohorts endure their alarming adventures. And then there’s the fact that the book has already been turned into a fantastically successful trilogy of films.

Peter Darling, who has given up years of his life to both shows, admits that his first reaction was ‘You must be mad!’ when asked if he would be interested in joining the ‘LotR’ team. He was then successfully wooed by director Matthew Warchus, but some of those doubts must have returned when they opened in Toronto to blistering reviews. The New York Times described the show as being reminiscent of an arts-and-crafts fair. The Daily Telegraph said it was ‘ponderous’ and ‘insufferably twee’.
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The run was curtailed in Canada, but producer Kevin Wallace and his team were undeterred – clearly inspired by the stubborn characters they’re portraying on stage. They’ve raised more money, made many changes (especially in clarifying the storyline), and are now once more open for action, after further modifications when an actor painfully trapped his leg in one of the lifts during a preview.

Darling is a thoughtful, quiet man, who seems far removed from the glitzy world of the West End musical. He cites Lloyd Newsom and Robert Lepage as major influences and draws comfort from the fact that they both view the first outing of a new work as part of the ongoing process. Thomas Beecham advised that you should try everything once except incest and folk dancing. It’s advice Darling, who says that he’s ‘as interested in physical theatre and contemporary dance as I am in people tapping their hearts out’, has ignored in his search for the right kind of movement to go with the music, a combination of Finnish group Värttinä, Indian composer AR Rahman and musical supervisor Christopher Nightingale.

Some of Darling’s research was done in London Zoo’s twilight world . ‘I then thought about folk dance and started to put different kinds together. So there’s stuff from the Black Sea, plus morris dancing, and bits of Ukrainian dance all combined within a dance where people squat down to their haunches as well.’ His biggest fear is of producing something that’s clichéd, which in this case would be ‘to do it as pure morris dance. You have to view folk dance from the bottom end of the glass.’

My memory of the films is of endless battles spectacularly presented using CGI, but Darling says that the emphasis here is more on the characters’ journey. His job has to been to create all the different worlds presented on stage at the same time as coping with nine stage-lifts, elaborate and heavy costumes, orcs on crutches, bungee trapezes and weaponry – a task he describes as 3D chess. He wasn’t happy with the choreography in Toronto and his own breakthrough came later: ‘I realised that the movement should provide a tremendous motor and somehow that wasn’t happening. And I realised, specifically with the orcs, that a sense of militarism is often presented through mechanistic movement and that actually there was a way of putting it all together with carefully planned moments of unison, which give you the sense of dance and movement but always strongly attached to meaning.’

Competition is intense in the West End. There are currently an exceptional 22 musicals to choose from all claiming to offer a sensational night out. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that there are enough performers of a sufficient quality to take part in these shows. ‘I worried about whether we would be able to find the right calibre of performers,’ Darling agrees. ‘But I think it is one of the most talented companies I’ve ever worked with. There are just many, many people who want to perform. The demand for people is there and they respond to it. And the training has changed – there used to be a time when there was a very clear separation between singers and dancers. That’s no longer the case. Now not everybody has to do everything, but they certainly need to show willing.’

‘The Lord of the Rings’ is previewing at the Drury Lane Theatre (press night Tuesday)