Fellowship of the Rings

Illustration by Jillian Tamaki.

Baltimore native Connie Anderson and Bostonian Julie Chilton have a lot in common: they’re both accomplished musicians, mothers and J. R. R. Tolkien lovers. And they’re among the thousands of diehard fans from around the world who have descended on Toronto to see early performances of The Lord of the Rings, the most expensive musical in history. (Previews begin Feb. 4, two days later than planned; the gala opening is March 23.)

Some of these “Ringers” will attend the shows dressed up as wizards, elves and orcs; many, like Anderson and Chilton, will not. Neither woman wants to make a spectacle of herself. Still, their fandom is intense. They’ve written poetry, songs and essays about life on Middle-Earth and have traveled widely to Lord of the Rings get-togethers.

“Tolkien saved my life,” says Anderson simply.

Anderson (a manager at a charity) and Chilton (a music teacher) met online at one of the over six million Tolkien websites, most of which sprung up after the release of the first Peter Jackson film, The Fellowship of the Ring, in 2000. Both women were struggling to raise an autistic child and were starved for adult company. “I kept feeling that my mind — I have a doctorate in sociology and family therapy — was fading away,” Anderson says.

Call it the world’s biggest book group. “We all met on a chat room called Frodo’s Kitchen,” says Chilton. “The ‘kitchen ladies’ — that’s what we call ourselves — still get together on-line and sometimes in person.”

The stage version of The Lord of the Rings will obviously attempt to appeal to regular theatregoers. But in order to recoup its $27 million price tag and potentially extend the show to New York and London, the musical also needs to have the cultists on side. Please the Ringers and you’ve got a group of people who’ll do your advertising for you; after all, many are motivated enough to travel long distances (and pay high ticket prices) to see the show.

Hoping to smite critics: Members of the company in rehearsal for the Lord of the Rings stage production in Toronto. (CP Photo/Frank Gunn)

Montrealer Michael Regina co-founded one of the busiest Tolkien fan sites, launching it around the time the films were being shot. At first, the message boards were flooded with young men; as time passed, women — many in their 40s — started signing on in droves. Regina estimates that over 60 percent of the total online Tolkien traffic is female.

That said, the books aren’t exactly chick-lit. They’re filled with pitched battles and feature precious few female characters. “Of course there’s the hunk factor with the film,” Anderson says. “But you can find hunks in any genre. It’s more than that.” Anderson loves the hobbit protagonist, Frodo. She recently wrote an essay entitled One Step More: The Heroism of Frodo Baggins.

“He’s not your typical adventure-story hero, with all the charisma, the swordsmanship and the women,” she says. “He gets slowly wrecked as he does what he has to do, and at the end, he doesn’t get to have a total victory. His is a total sacrifice that matches more the grinding day-to-day experience that many of us have.”

When news of the musical first broke in 2003, people on various message boards were appalled at the idea. “We pictured hobbits doing jazz dance,” says Ringer Anthony Ferretti, a University of Toronto student who bought a ticket for an early preview. “Everyone on the sites was transforming Broadway songs into mock-Lord of the Rings numbers. You know, Eowyn singing, ‘What I did for love.’”

Through a series of canny teasers and a promotional tour through the northeastern U.S., the musical’s producers — Kevin Wallace, David Mirvish, rock promoter Michael Cohl and legendary movie mogul Saul Zaentz — have tried to allay purists’ fears. They’ve released a film clip of a rehearsal that most fans have seen and approve of — despite the grandiose pronouncements made by the show’s creative team. Online ticket sales have been brisk, with more than $1 million in tickets sold on the day the show’s website launched.

Still, it costs $1 million a week to stage the show, which is why securing the Ringers’ loyalty is a must. But satisfying hardcore fans is no mean feat. They’re the sort of people who test message-board newcomers with trick questions like “Does a Balrog have wings?” (in the book, no; in the movie, yes) and “Was Stuart Townsend cast as Aragorn in the films?” (yes, but then he was replaced by Viggo Mortensen). A wrong answer can lead to a shameful designation as a NARF (not a real fan).

Peter Jackson has done his part to curry favour with the fan community, even attending Oscar parties hosted by Regina in Hollywood. “He came the first and third years,” Regina recalls. “But he had to miss the one after The Two Towers, and felt so badly that he called in and we put him on the loud speaker.” The films’ producers often send cast members to such events. (Video footage taken at one party reveals that actor Andy Serkis, who played Gollum, knows no shame. He licked a fan’s neck while croaking out his character’s signature line: “My precious.”)

Asked if he’s attending the musical, Regina replies, “I don’t know, no one’s been in touch yet about going.” Clearly, he’s used to being courted.

Down among the Ringers: From left, Lyn Sigurdson, Louise Pattenden and Ruth McMath share grooming tips at a Lord of the Rings convention in Toronto in 2003. (CP Photo/Adrian Wyld)

Not all of the fans are as presentable as Anderson and Chilton, though, and courting them can be a risky business. On the message boards, some fans have threatened to attend the performance and behave as if it were a midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show — in other words, catcalling (“Gandalf’s not dead!”) and otherwise camping it up. 

Rings fans don’t just produce essays and Elvish poetry. There’s a sub-genre of fan fiction called Slash, which re-imagines the relationship between two male characters in a popular show or movie as a sexual one. A medieval studies professor at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Anna Smol has studied the fan sites extensively (and will also be attending an early preview of the play). In the case of The Lord of the Rings, Smol says, the Slash usually revolves around Frodo and his servant, Sam.

“Among my favourite scenes [in the Slash pieces] are those where Frodo tries to convince Sam to stop calling him ‘Mr. Frodo’ or ‘Sir’ in the bedroom,” says Smol.

Some of the fans go in for less titillating yet somehow more bizarre fare. In Ringers: Lord of the Fans, a documentary co-produced by Regina, one Tolkiener is seen reenacting the trilogy with marshmallows in all the lead roles. Another devotee sends her Lord of the Rings action figures on a pilgrimage to the author’s grave in Oxfordshire, England.

During his lifetime, fans often harassed Tolkien at his Oxford home, prompting him to dismiss them as “my deplorable cultists.” He himself had doubts about the stage adaptation of his work.

“He once wrote that drama is naturally hostile to fantasy,” Smol says. “He thought fantasy required a kind of enchantment, and producers of a play would have to work with too many mechanisms to produce that effect.”

Connie Anderson is more optimistic. “The little bits [from the rehearsals] I’ve seen on the Internet make me hopeful. I just want them to capture the heart of it. So long as they do that, I’ll leave the theatre happy.”

The fans want to protect their master’s legacy — what they see as the story’s “heart.” Upset them with a gimmicky adaptation, one that appears to be unfaithful to the book’s core, and you’ll lose all credibility with the purists. Worse still, you’ll probably lose your $27-million shirt.

Alec Scott writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites - links will open in new window.