Lord of the Rings adaptations, Radio Dramas, etc..

[Yazad]

Hello everyone!

I would like to raise an issue for debate, but I'm not sure which forum is should go under, so I'll just drop it here for the time being.

I was just perusing old polls at theonering.net, and one of the questions asked prior to the new big budget films, which was the best adaptation of Tolkien's works. Possible answers include most of the adaptations in non-print (of which I am aware, there may, of course, be others) whether they be radio dramas, films, made for t.v. movies or audiobooks. Some items are left out, of course.

At any rate the Mind's Eye radio dramas rank near the bottom of the list, which disturbs me. I am very biased towards these productions as they were some of the earliest exposure I had to the Lord of the Rings and have listened to them more times than I can possibly count. At any rate, I was curious as to what others thought of them. I have always thought that they were wonderfully adapted, produced and acted. And, although there are problems here and there, overall, I have found them to be my favorite of all the adaptations. Even the BBC radio dramas don't quite measure up in my opinion, even though they are also quite good. One of the most difficult parts about adapting for radio, at least from a listener's perspective, is deciding what to narrate and what to have the actors say, and I feel that the Mind's Eye production did a much finer job with this than the BBC radio drama. The Mind's Eye performance *is* distinctly Americanised in some way that's difficult to explain (other than the fact that they axed many of the songs), which might be where the problems arise. Also some of the actor's voices take some getting used to.

Who knows! Maybe I'm just brainwashed from many years of listening, but I would dearly like to hear other people's opinions on this.

I'd also like to throw in a plug for the Recorded Books Inc., unabridged audiobooks versions of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, which I feel is also a fantastic production for those of us with long commutes and were not listed on the theonering.net poll.

Thanks for listening!

[Finduilas]

I regularly listen to the BBC Radio play of the LOTR, and I agree it's great for vacations and long trips. (I listened to the Hobbit for the first time on the plane back from England). I have not heard any other versions of either, so I cannot really compare them.

[bmilder]

My favorite adaptation would probably be Interplay's LotR computer games, or The Two Towers MUD game! It's amazing to be able to explore Middle-earth yourself, either with the Fellowship through the first two books visually as with Interplay's games (they never came out with a RotK game) or meeting new friends from around the world as you journey through Middle-earth in a text-based, richly described MUD at the time of the Two Towers book (as in T2T).

[Darth Tater]

I've only ever ehard the Minds' Eye production. It was ok, but way too American for my taste.

[BilboFrodo]

Well I don't listen or see to any adaptations because none of tem would be the perfect Gandalf or the perfect Bilbo and for the movie thats coming out I am one LOTR fan who will miss it. I only listen to the recordings Tolkien made before it was published.

[Khazad Yehudi]

Khazad answers Yazad.

I heard the B.B.C. wireless (Old English for ‘radio’) version when it was new. One thing that struck me then was how little aural atmosphere there was. By that I mean that when people were speaking out of doors (where, of course, much of the action takes place) the timbre of their voices suggested they were talking in a fairly small room. This was most noticeable in the exchange between Aragorn and the King of the Dead; ‘Oathbreakers, why have ye come?’, uttered on the bare heath of Erech, sounded like one old fogey murmuring a greeting to another in a London gentlemen's club.

Another drawback was summed up by a newspaper reviewer of the time somewhat like this: —
[Typical piece of dialogue]: (Gandalf) ‘Here come the Orcs!’ — {Noise of fighting} — (Gandalf) ‘There go the Orcs!’ In other words, too much compression and too many similar scenes.

The idea that Frodo turned to drink (‘Ho, ho, ho, to the bottle I go!’) after returning to the Shire, in order to dull the pain of his wounds, is intriguing but not really convincing.

And what a struggle Aragorn had getting out the word ‘gay’, when he had to say of Merry in the Houses of Healing ‘so strong and gay a spirit is within him’!

Nonetheless I enjoyed it at the time and would not be sorry to hear it again.

[Yazad]

A couple things

On BilboFrodo's comment,

I agree that no adaptation is perfect, but I don't necessarily believe that they have to be perfect. Tolkien's work is art and as art, everyone has an interpretation of it, and, for me, everyone's interpretation is valid as long as the interpreter is trying to show us his/her vision and not bow to commericalization/crowd pleasing, or the like. Just like there are many pieces of visual art (paintings in particular) that are based on scenes of his work. They are each different and I may say *feh* Gollum was not a freaking mutated frog, if that's how Mr. Bass saw him, then so be it. I would go so far as to say that I think Tolkien's own paintings of Smaug are absurd. He looks like a lizard! But at the same time they are beautiful as you get to see what Smaug looked like to him. Tolkien's own voice recordings often don't do justice to the piece, IMO. The songs he performs are almost never sung (which is fine by me, I prefer them as poetry myself). So I guess I'll end up being the exact opposite of you, I'll watch everyone's interpretation and gag on half of them :) . I have a friend who I regularly give cast updates to on the upcoming films and he says "Who's that? As far as I'm concerned Gollum is playing Gollum". To me it's more like watching a Shakespeare play: You're never gonna see Willie directing it, but you *will* get to see what someone else thinks it looks and sounds like to him or her.

In response to Khazad Yehudi:

Yeah, I had the same problems with the BBC radio drama. It's hard to decide what to try to have the characters expose and what to leave to narration or leave out. That (Gandalf) ‘Here come the Orcs!’ — {Noise of fighting} — (Gandalf) ‘There go the Orcs!’ is always difficult. I think the NPR version (American Mind's Eye version) did a better job of handling this task, due in large part to the prowess of the narrator, Gail Chugg. I think he really nailed a lot of the most dramatic narrations. Having a lesser actor in that role would have made the production lean more heavily on the characters. And I don't believe there is any shame in using a narrator to great extent in a story like this, as the tales are very much in storytelling mode, especially The Hobbit.

I hope that you have a chance to listen to the American versions and compare them. As I said earlier, they are somehow distinctly American and Tater, in particular, was bothered by that. I don't know how to say this without sounding totally ethnocentric, but I think the very fact that it was Americanized somehow appealed to me, as an American. Not because it was particularly stipped of it's English feel or from some sense of patriotism or anything, but simply, I believe that it was more targeted towards me as I've become, simply because of the culture I grew up in. I doubt that makes any sense. At any rate I still think they're great for all their shortcomings. The BBC version was also wonderful, but not quite as wonderful to me, and lacked the powerful narration. Gail Chugg saying "Far away, even as Frodo put on the ring and claimed it for his own, the Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him and his eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain to the cleft in the mountain. Then the magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and all the devices of his enemies were at last laid bare. Then his wrath blazed in consuming fire, but his fear rose like a vast black smoke to choke him, for he knew his deadly peril and the thread upon which his doom now hung..." ahhhhh, that'll forever be ingrained in my mind. Better even than reading it on the page.

Bernard Mays also did a fantastic Gandalf in my opinion, as did most of the cast.

Blah blah blah, this is sounding like an adveritsement.

Yazad

[Doll Tearsheet]

>>>>>The idea that Frodo turned to drink (‘Ho, ho, ho, to the bottle I go!’) after returning to the Shire, in order to dull the pain of his wounds, is intriguing but not really convincing.

Ian Holm as Frodo sang that in Episode One, not at the end before departing West, then said "Good health, Bilbo, wherever you are" - kind of to imply that he missed Bilbo. But I don't think anything in particular was being implied there - it was just setting the scene for the arrival of Gandalf with his "double whammy" about the Ring and the Quest.

>>>>>>And what a struggle Aragorn had getting out the word ‘gay’, when he had to say of Merry in the Houses of Healing ‘so strong and gay a spirit is within him’!

I think that was pretty much Robert Stephens's way of speaking - he pauses and spaces out his phrases throughout the BBC LOTR - and in his other performances too, as far as I remember - Pistol, Castlebar ...

JACK May played Theoden (good, wasn't he?!!)

[Gilthalion]

I did not care for Aragorn in the BBC version, which admittedly, I haven't heard in many years. He sounded like an old man with a speech impediment who was just trying to get through the reading, collect his pay, and head for the tavern.

My own attempt is even worse, in a different way. I muddle my dialects and fail to achieve what I wanted. To hear this in RealAudio, check out Rivendell on the Tolkien Trail (the host site for this forum) or my own site Gilthalion's Grand Adventures (http://www.geocities.com/robertwgardner2000/gilthalion.html). I've recorded several vignettes. These are pretty close to being one take recordings, started as an audition to help me get in character for my reading of THE HOBBIT at Barnes & Noble last year. The quality is also low. But you might like the dramatization, the effect being closer to a storyteller performance than an ensemble production.

[Inoldonil]

I am much better at accepting art as art when dealing with Middle-earth nowadays, but I do not think Tolkien's art or the art indeed of fantasy writers is as open to interpretation as antique paintings and the like. I am not keen on "interpretations," this seems to be a license to change whatever you want to fit your vision. They ought to call it something else, more often than not you cannot interpret what Tolkien wrote to be what it ends up in one of these "interpretations." Green Uruks over six feet tall emerging from pods for example. But I'm hard to please as a Tolkien purist.

Personally I find it absurd anyone can call Tolkien's vision absurd! Because that's how Tolkien saw it means that's how Smaug looked. This is probably why the people who study Middle-earth are almost always purists, if you look at it the way you do (no offence) it really doesn't matter much about what JRR Tolkien had in mind. Ofcourse he noted himself Bilbo was exceedingly too large in one of his Smaug paintings (there's only one with Bilbo in it), but he said it can be explained by admitting Mr. Baggins was on a different plane. Most of the "songs" in the books are actually poetry or else are spoken by the characters themselves, and not sung. Tolkien was not a talented singer, so we should be happy he never sung any, but you puzzle me. I was under the impression he only read Riddles in the Dark. There are no songs in that chapter.

I very much enjoyed the BBC radio production of the Lord of the Rings on the whole. It was almost as accurate as a dramatization probably could be, and you'll probably enjoy them even more if you haven't read the books (but are a Fantasy fan, which almost isn't possible). I certainly don't like the idea of the Lord of the Rings characters talking with US accents, and not the English ones, or whatever European mode of voice you can come up with. I'll probably not listen to an Americanized version.

I just wish someone would make a recording of all six books, word for word, and be gone with these dramas. Gilthalion's starting the task......

[Gilthalion]

What a task you set for me!

I wish though, that I had recorded my reading of THE HOBBIT.

I did hear Tolkien singing an early version of THE TROLL SONG. It is available on the net. He does not sing badly!

[Inoldonil]

No? He said in the Letters he has no musical talent or knowledge, I thought that applied to his voice as well!

[Gilthalion]

Modesty! But like Sam, he enjoys comic verse. He sang it with a Cahckney dialect. Probably by ear, like most folk.

(I spelled the dialect phonetically because of the EZBOARD language filter.)

[lotuszmaan]

im really dying for this bbc radio drama,
as i only have the german radio version (30x30mins mp3)
which is in fact really good

i need it...
tell me where to get it...

anything serious to lotusz@gmx.net

[Morkhon]

You should be able to find it at any book store like Barnes & Noble's, or Waldenbooks. If they don't have it they can most likely order it for you, as can any decent music store.

[andrew charity]

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[andrew charity]

There was also the bbc radio dramatization of 1956 whose cast included Norman Shelley, known for playing Dr. Watson on bbc radio from 1952 to 1969. I know of this version only from Carpenter's bio and letters of Tolkein. It would be fun to know more about it.

[Idril Celebrindal]

hmm... yeah, it would.

on the subject of the songs/poetry, Tolkien recorded quite a few. I have a double tape set which has a load of poetry on, and also the 'of herbs and stewed rabbit' section, and 'riddles in the dark.' While they may technically not be the best readings in some cases, I find it fascinating to hear how Tolkien thought things should sound. And I love his rendition of the Troll song... that's on the tape, too...

[Prince Faramir]

can be found on napster - gotta try really hard - imesh - winmx - audio galaxy.......

its there, just look for it, and u might need a bit of hard drive cos it is 13 parts of about 30 each :P mb's i think....i'm really enjoying it, if you ignore the brilliance of the book and just think of the themes in relation to adaption it is excellent.....

[ladyisme]

Is it just me or can you sometimes hear the voices of characters that are not supposed to be there during the battle scenes of the Mind's Eye production?

"The road goes ever on and on down from the door where it began."