The economic and artistic lessons of Lord of the Rings….

Tolkien’s big, bold, epic The Lord of the Rings is an adventure quest of a very unique order; and so, it seems, is the attempt to bring it to the stage. Yesterday the latest chapter was being written with a press conference at Drury Lane to introduce the 50-strong cast and creative team to the press. As Matthew Warchus, director of the stage version, said, Peter Jackson’s three part film version is the longest movie ever made. But when this production had its first incarnation in Toronto last year, it became one of the longest single-part stage productions in living memory, running at nearly four hours.

I was at the first night of that production, and was impressed by its scale, ambition and originality. But the Toronto production was, in the end, a financial if not artistic flop, and closed before the year was out. That was not, however, the end of the story.

The material has been duly looked at again, and following two more workshops that took place last May and November, it has been streamlined still further. 80% of the show, insisted Warchus yesterday, was successful in Toronto; but now problems in the remaining 20% have been addressed, including the running time which undoubtedly proved a deterrent, if not literally a pain in the butt for potential audiences. Now, with the running time brought down to what they promise will be less than three hours, they’re trying again.

It’s another bold, brave step in this production’s history. On the one hand, they might just be throwing good money after bad – having already spent £12.5 million in Toronto, a further £12.5 million has now been raised in investment to revise and remount it here. (The Toronto investors, revealed lead producer Kevin Wallace, may yet see a return on their investment, of course, if this production recoups, but their share is now proportionately only one fifth of the value of the new money that has been put in, which will be repaid first).

Warchus is undaunted, however daunting the overall project has been (and for which, he revealed, he has had to drawn on his background in maths, such is the logistical effort of co-ordinating it all. I quipped in reply, “So what are you drawing on for Boeing-Boeing?”, referring to the sex farce that he brings back to the West End next week for what he called “a good antidote to Lord of the Rings” – was it his bedroom?). Characterising the show as “Shakespeare meets Cirque du Soleil”, he said that his only concern is the artistic one, of translating this story to the stage. As for the financial one, “important, wealthy, influential people have taken a brutal business decision” – they’ve made “a calculated assessment of the risk” and decided to have another go at doing it. “We wouldn’t be here if the Toronto experience wasn’t positive enough. It revealed how close we came to getting it right and what needed to be recalibrated.”

Toronto, he says now, was a “stepping stone” to where they are now – albeit an expensive one. But he says, “it got the best audience response there of anything I have ever directed”. Toronto may have been the wrong place, ultimately, to have launched a project so big: “Toronto is a city with a population that is smaller than Manchester,” he pointed out. Mistakes were made and lessons learnt. Now, however, he is under no illusions about the stern new test it faces: London audiences can be a tough one to please. “British audiences know their theatre and will know the value of it.” But Warchus – who also hopes that it will convert a whole new generation to the act of theatregoing, by showing them “everything that theatre can do” – thinks that it’ll also usher in a new kind of show: “After the rash of spoof shows, this is the return of storytelling to the theatre.”

Warchus is a serious but hugely likeable man, and the team that he and Wallace have gathered around them is one of the best in the business, from designer Rob Howell to choreographer Peter Darling. If anyone can pull it off, it’s them. It’ll be fascinating to watch it evolve.