They’re Tolkien ’bout a revolution!
Middle Earth will get a mid-’60s musical makeover next month at the Brick, in “The Beatles Present ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Musical,’ ” opening Oct. 6. The wacky comedy is based on a true but little-known chapter in the Fab Four’s history, when the band hoped to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy into a film. The show imagines what might have happened if director Stanley Kubrick had not shot the idea down deader than Boromir, said one of the show’s creators.
“It’s a very silly, dumb show — but it tells the story of the band and their dynamics and alludes to, ‘Oh, what if they did this movie? Would it have kept them together?’ ” said co-writer and director Kyle Wilson.
The hour-long show opens with the mop-topped musicians about to break their fellowship, but their shared passion for the tale of hobbits and wizards leads them to slap together a makeshift adaptation of the fantasy trilogy, with spatulas serving as swords and a pile of books and a lava lamp transforming into the Tower of Sauron (Barad-Dûr to the fans out there).
“It’s got a very Monty Python sensibility. The vibe is very low-fidelity cleverness,” said Wilson. “It’s very do-it-yourself, they’re grabbing costume pieces from furniture and making props and doing their own thing.”
John Lennon and Paul McCartney take on the roles of hero hobbit Frodo Baggins and his sidekick Samwise Gamgee, while George Harrison and Ringo Starr play almost everyone else, including the wizard Gandalf, the elf queen Galadriel, and the scheming Saruman — all while Gollum, played by Yoko Ono, strives to break up the band and reclaim her “Precious” John Lennon.
But one does not simply write a “Lord of the Rings” musical. Wilson and French, who both live in Bushwick, have given classic Beatles songs a fantastic twist, so that “Good Day Sunshine” becomes “Good Day Sauron,” and “Yellow Submarine” has the lads from Liverpool all live in Fellowship of the Ring, a Fellowship of the Ring, a Fellowship of the Ring.
“It was mainly Kyle and I sitting around going through the whole canon of Beatles songs to figure out what we could adjust to the ‘Lord of the Rings,’ ” said Sam French, the show’s other writer and director.
But the story has grown from a simple celebration of fantasy and ’60s rock into a tale about creativity and relationships, said French.
“It’s really evolved into this story of friendship,” said French. “John and Paul mirror the arc of Frodo and Sam’s friendship. And at the end of the day, it’s still four people who want to put on a show and are trying their best to make something good.”
The writer-director duo would love to see the show on the Great White Wizard Way, but for now they just want audiences to enjoy themselves — and to learn a bit about Middle Earth and the Beatles. It is a show anyone can enjoy, said Wilson, even if they can’t tell a ukelele from an Uruk-hai.
“We hope people come out loving ‘Lord of the Rings’ and the Beatles, but if not we hope that they at least want to love them or learn more about them,” said Wilson. “It’s a funny evening of theater, mainly brainless in the best way possible.”
“The Beatles Present ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Musical’ ” at the Brick (575 Metropolitan Ave. between Union and Lorimer streets in Williamsburg, (718) 907–6189, www.brick
