Jemma Rix, who is set to dazzle audiences as Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings: A Musical Tale when it premieres in Sydney, found her way to Middle-earth through Peter Jackson’s iconic film adaptations.
The 41-year-old performer, who grew up on the Central Coast and now calls Melbourne home, is no stranger to epic roles. Renowned for her turn as Elphaba in Wicked – a role she’s played more than 400 times across Australia – Rix was just like the rest of us when she eagerly lined up at cinemas to watch The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002), and The Return of the King (2003), captivated by Jackson’s reimagining of Tolkien’s timeless world.
“I went to the opening nights and was there front row and centre when each one was released; I am that generation,” she says of the Oscar-winning films in which Cate Blanchett played the royal elf, Galadriel.
Jemma Rix will play Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings – A Musical Tale. Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Rarmian Newton, 31, who portrays the musical’s lead character, Frodo, and Wern Mak, 25, who plays his steadfast companion, Samwise Gamgee, each discovered and fell in love with the beloved fantasy tale after different journeys.
“I wasn’t a reader as a kid, but I was really into the battles with my Lord of the Rings Lego characters,” says Newton, best known for his lead role in the Australian production of Billy Elliot the Musical, which saw him named best male actor at the 2008 Helpmann Awards.
“I was too young to watch the movies, but I had a poster of Legolas – the Orlando Bloom blond version – on my bedroom wall and played all the Lord of the Rings video games,” says Melbourne-born Malaysian Chinese actor Mak, who most recently appeared in Hamilton.
Be it book, board or video game, Lego or Legolas merchandise, it doesn’t matter what your entry point to “the most remembered text of the 20th century” is, says Terence Crawford, who plays Gandalf in the musical.
Jemma Rix as Elpheba and Lucy Durack as Glinda in Wicked.
“I am not a Ring nut … I’m in my early 60s, but it is easy to see why Tolkien’s themes appeal to generation after generation. It is an archetypal story about people who have learnt to live peacefully close to nature - The Hobbits - and what happens when their little piece of the world is threatened … they stand up for it and fight. Just like in The Castle,” he jokes.
Tolkien’s epic novels, with more than 150 million copies sold, rank among the best-selling books in the world.
“Tolkien’s intention was always that the stories be perpetuated in other forms because of their universality,” says the show’s musical director, Michael McBride. However, condensing his 1200-page trilogy into a three-hour musical is a bold endeavour that even the writer could hardly have imagined in his lifetime.
Laurence Boxhall, who will play the character of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings – A Musical Tale.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
In 1969, J.R.R. Tolkien, an Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon (Old English), sold the rights to his work to United Artists, hoping for a successful Hollywood adaptation. However, fantasy films failed to capture the interest of Los Angeles studios, both during his lifetime and after his death in 1973. Eventually, Saul Zaentz, a Berkeley-based record producer who had made his fortune with the band Creedence Clearwater Revival, purchased the rights from United Artists. In 1977, he authorised the creation of a small live-action animated film depicting Frodo’s journey, according to Fredrica Drotos, Zaentz’s lawyer at the time.
“The Ralph Bakshi animation released in 1978, was panned by the critics but became a cult classic and was seen by a young boy in New Zealand, called Peter Jackson and the rest, as they say, is cinema history,” says Drotos, of the New Zealand director of the film trilogy, which won 17 Oscars.
Fredrica Drotos, now the brand steward of Middle-earth Enterprises, oversees the licensing of all Tolkien-related spin-offs in partnership with the author’s family. This includes ventures like the musical, Amazon’s two-season prequel series The Rings of Power – produced for an astonishing $250 million – collector cards, video and board games, and even Middle-earth-themed honey from New Zealand.
Terence Crawford ( Gandalf) Wern Mak (Samwise Gamgee) and Rarmian Newton (Frodo Baggins).Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
In 2006, Saul Zaentz collaborated with Irish producer Kevin Wallace, a former member of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical theatre powerhouse, the Really Useful Group, to create The Lord of the Rings: A Musical Tale. The $50 million West End production, which premiered in Toronto and London, was the most expensive in British musical theatre history at the time. Wallace brought together an impressive creative team, including Oscar-winning music producer A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire), Finnish folk band Värttinä, and Tony Award-winning composer Christopher Nightingale (Matilda the Musical), with lyrics and a book by Shaun McKenna and Matthew Warchus. Although it received five Olivier Award nominations, including Best New Musical, the production closed after 13 months, a victim of the 2008 global financial crisis.
Paul Hart, director of the Australian production, which started at the Watermill Theatre in Berkshire in the UK, saw the original large-scale West End production. When his company lost its government funding in 2022 in the middle of COVID, he struck upon the idea of bringing a shortened, more cost-effective version of the production to his part of rural England.
Spencer Davis Milford as Frodo and Tony Bozzuto as Gollum in the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre’s production of The Lord of the Rings, coming to Sydney in January.Credit: Liz Lauren
“I hadn’t thought about this musical for ages until I was at my best friend’s wedding and a group of performers sang [the title song] Now and for Always – the anthem of the hobbits sung by friends Frodo and Samwise,” Hart says. “That gave me the idea to find a way to set the show in a shire like the pre-industrial one Tolkien wrote about.”
Its 12-week season sold out, the longest season of any show in the Watermill’s 57-year history, and helped the regional operation be named “theatre of the year” at the UK Stage Awards in 2024.
“What I love about the script is it does a brilliant job condensing the narrative of all three books into one hour each. It is immersive – a perfect introduction into the Lord of the Rings’ universe for those coming to it fresh who have never read the books or seen the films but know the story through video games … it equally engages mad Tolkienites,” Hart says.
This production, which debuted in the United States at Chicago’s Shakespeare Theatre and then in November in Auckland – just two hours from Hobbiton, where Peter Jackson filmed his iconic trilogy – features a 32-member cast. Uniquely, most of the performers are also musicians, playing their own instruments, which eliminates the need for a separate orchestra and significantly reduces production costs.
Designer Simon Kenny’s set opens in the Shire with the audience joining in on celebrations for Bilbo Baggins’ eleventy-first birthday and transports them with Frodo and Samwise through the worlds of Rivendell, Lothlorien and Mordor, the realm of evil lord Sauron. Puppetry brings to life the menacing dark riders and the terrifying spider, Shelob. In both Chicago and Auckland, performances have drawn enthusiastic crowds, including superfans dressed as elves, orcs, Hobbits, and other beloved characters from Tolkien’s world.
“We’ve heard so many people leave the show saying they want to read the books now,” says Hart. “We think Tolkien would have liked that.”
Lord of the Rings: A Musical Tale opens at Sydney’s State Theatre on January 7; The Crown Theatre, Perth on March 19; Comedy Theatre, Melbourne on April 26 and HOTA on the Gold Coast on July 4. The writer travelled to Chicago courtesy of GWB Entertainment.