Lords of the Rings in Seurasaari

Makers of the upcoming West End musical based on Tolkien's trilogy come seeking inspiration

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By Jussi Ahlroth
     
      When you are planning a massive West End musical based around J.R.R.Tolkien’s famous Lord of the Rings trilogy, where do you go for inspiration? Why, Finland, of course.
      "A part of the musical score has a Finnish soul, so there should be some Finnish soul in the design of the piece", explains set and costume designer Rob Howell, in response to the obvious question of why a team from the upcoming production should have stopped off in Finland to pick up a Middle Earth vibe.
      The Finnish soul is being put into the music by folk group Värttinä, one of the two principal sources behind the show's score. The other is the Indian composer A.R. Rahman (See earlier article).
     
Finnish culture is going to be present in the musical on several levels. The first is of course Värttinä, whose album Ilmatar - and in particular the track entitled Äijö - caught the attention of the production company. But the producers had a surprise in store - Tolkien had got here first, by at least half a century.
      "It was not until we had decided to invite Värttinä into the project that we discovered that the Finnish language had been a source of inspiration for Tolkien himself. It felt then as though we had instinctively come to the right place", says co-producer Kevin Wallace enthusiastically, as we meet him in the yard of a complete tenant farm at the Seurasaari open-air folk museum in Helsinki.
      Seurasaari was a self-evident part of the production-team’s short introduction to Finland.
      Wallace notes that Tolkien blended in his writing his own Christian traditions with the myths and tales of the older pagan oral tradition, and in so doing created something novel and unique.
     
The musical seeks to bring out precisely that atmosphere of folk tale and legend, in part through the encouragement of Värttinä themselves. Rob Howell says that finding the Finnish band opened up the folk tradition to the production team in a quite new fashion. Folk music does not have to be dry and boring, he says, but can be "sparkling, energetic, and inspirational".
      The close presence of folk myths and folk narrative also lends the musical a different feel from that of director Peter Jackson’s enormously successful series of LOTR films, which tap into a much more grandiose fantasy spectacle atmosphere.
      Not surprisingly, the films are seen as both an opportunity and a challenge for the makers of the musical. In the wake of the colossal publicity they helped to generate, the musical has gathered a great deal more public interest, but at the same time the image of the books on film may well have given viewers powerful expectations of how The Shire, Middle Earth, and Mordor are supposed to look and sound.
     
According to Kevin Wallace, they are going to make their own version of the Tolkien world. A producer cannot avoid thinking about the relationship of the musical to the Jackson films, but set designer Rob Howell claims he has not even seen the movies.
      The pair were accompanied on their visit to Finland by Irene Bohan, who will be responsible for designing the more than 500 costumes required in the show. Bohan has worked previously with the other musical source for the LOTR musical, A.R. Rahman, on the Broadway production of Bombay Dreams.
      For Howell and Bohan, the opportunity of being able to fly to see possible sources on site is a luxury indeed.
     
The production team have a monumental amount of work ahead of them, and the project is being carried out from start to finish with exceptional attention to detail.
      There are also plans in the pipeline for a fact-finding visit to India. Tolkien’s story contains many peoples and races, and so the field is open to find sources and inspiration from a range of locales.
      The team are not looking for anything specific from Finland in the form of objects or garments, but more by way of influences and sensations or "triggers" for the creative process.
      "We want to take away with us a collection of information on colours, fabrics and surfaces that we might be able to work into the production", says Howell.
      So there is no point in anyone expecting to see hobbits dressed in Finnish national costume, then?
      "No, it’s more a matter of the way clothes hang, of colours and weaves, and so on. The costumes might have a Finnish scent about them, but then again we don’t want it to be like someone could go to the show and say 'Whoa, Hey, I recognise that - I saw it in a museum in Finland'", explains Howell.
     
The team’s itinerary, arranged with the help of the Finnish Institute in London, has taken them to Seurasaari, to the National Museum, the Atheneum (the National Gallery), and to the Theatre Museum.
      In addition, they got an introduction to the traditional hand-made jewellery of Kalevala Koru and to the Finnish ryijy rug-making traditions at the Friends of Finnish Handcraft. Up in Jyväskylä, they paid a visit to the Finnish Handcraft Museum.
     
And what came out of all this? "Everything was interesting", said Howell of their trip to the National Museum.
      "We could make use of the decorations we saw on a traditional costume as the basis for chain-mail. In any event we are going to need to make chain-mail, and we can either do it the way it has always been done or we can devise our own version."
      Irene Bohan notes that the item in question was an ornament made of copper wire wrapped around a strip of cloth. "We immediately wondered what we could do with it to ensure that nobody could recognise it as a copper-wire decoration", she says.
      They found a number of further spurs to the imagination in the Museum’s collection of brooches and other jewellery.
      "One thing we picked up, for instance, was this brooch, about a couple of centimetres across. It could be used as the basis for a shield. That’s the sort of way we are working - looking at the silhouettes of things as much as at their real content. We are like magpies - taking objects and secreting them away and then using them in a completely different manner from the original purpose", laughs Howell.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 20.9.2004

More on this subject:
 The most expensive West End production ever seen

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Värttinä to co-score Lord of the Rings musical for London West End (22.10.2003)

Links:
  Värttinä
  The Lord of the Rings Musical
  Seurasaari Open-Air Museum
  National Museum of Finland
  Atheneum
  Theatre Museum
  A National Geographic article exploring the links between Tolkien and Kalevala

JUSSI AHLROTH / Helsingin Sanomat
jussi.ahlroth@hs.fi