The Hobbit

The Hobbit is a Vanessa Ford Productions stage adaptation of Tolkien’s famous novel, a prequel to The Lord of the Rings which introduces many of the central characters, settings and themes, all of which are of course familiar to today’s audience through Peter Jackson’s epic film trilogy.

Like its sequels, The Hobbit is a mammoth of a novel, but Glyn Robbins' adaptation has done little to scale it down to what can be realistically achieved in theatre. The story is difficult to follow, with lots of short scenes that don’t really seem to tie together. This gives the impression that Robbins has tried to include every scene of the original novel in strict chronological order, resulting in numerous scatty and lengthy scene changes that make it impossible to gain or maintain any lasting interest in what is going on. The stage looks enormous and empty with too few actors performing painfully childlike fight scenes, despite it being an all-male cast of fourteen. Sadly, the intended grand scale of the battles is in no way portrayed.

While there’s no doubt that the cast and crew have worked very hard with the elaborate choreography, The Hobbit is a confused production that seems unsure of its target audience.

For all its lack of direction, it certainly looks expensive, featuring an impressively gigantic dragon and a larger-than-human spider with eight individually-moving legs. Pyrotechnics are used at every available possibility, along with a deafening soundtrack and blood-curdling screams every now and then, startling the snoozing audience out of their torpor.

Painfully long at two hours and fifty minutes, the urge to check your watch is almost overwhelming within half an hour. It is also noticeable that a number of audience members do not return after the interval, and while there is one highlight—an incredibly camp line-dance so ridiculous that for a fleeting moment it almost became bearable—it’s not enough to save The Hobbit from being a disappointing performance.