Can’t say that I am a LOTR fanatic although I have seen the films (just the once though and I admit that I fell asleep during one of the early battle scenes), so I took along a friend’s 16 year old son to gain his perspective…
The first half hour of the evening was presented by a comedian – Henry Packer – who did some nice gags about cardigans (the opposite of a hoodie) and “unreading” books. In keeping with the evening’s main event, he also did some funny impressions of Frodo. He pursued some entertaining enquiries into the backgrounds of the people in the boxes (“Solo Box Guy – a metaphor for your own loneliness”). Then we had a half hour interval before the main production started.
Charles Ross (a self proclaimed dork and a Canadian), then managed to get through the entire three Lord of the Rings films (with helpful “Change DVD” instructions when he needed water) with little more than some coloured lights and a voice that did the full gambit of characters, background music and sound effects – with some rather high speed changes. Dressed in a black boiler suit he had no props or sets to help him.
I have to say it was brilliant. There were plenty of laugh out loud moments as he made a smart wisecrack to some modern reference (e.g. Elrond being Mr Smith and doing a “Mr Anderson” impression from Matrix) before returning to the quest of Frodo, Legolas (indicated by combing his long hair), Sam, Gandalf et al and the battles with Sauron and the Orcs. His depiction of Gollum was uncanny and how he managed to do so many battle scenes (he must have thrown himself on the floor about a 100 times – each time differently) defies comprehension. Even the moth made an appearance. How many times must he have watched those films in order to summarise the entire story so eloquently and entertainingly in just over 60 minutes?
This was the last night of his 48 city tour (since January) – you have to admire the guy’s stamina. At the end he talked about his other work – One Man Star Wars and the five years it took to gain licensing permission to perform LOTR after Ian McKellen watched one of his performances.
My young companion thought the whole thing was brilliant and thoroughly enjoyed the performance. So check out www.onemanlotr.com for further information and watch it for news of when Charles will return to the UK. The web site also contains a charming perspective (with photos) on some of the UK’s small towns he visited in his tour. Wonder what he’ll say about Richmond?
