James' fan club

So, two dear friends surprised me with LOTR tickets, which was all the more surprising considering that they actually humoured me in getting the synopsis of The Hobbit, and all three LOTRs before the show started.
Now, I'm no theatre critic (food critic, perhaps, but no theatre critic), and I know it's gotten some very luke warm reviews, but I liked it pretty OK, notwithstanding my bias. Certainly, there were elements that I think would be inevitably compared to the films, but I think they did quite well considering the limitations of the stage, without the benefits of digital imaging, special effects and casts of thousands. I think I appreciated the way that they did try to make it distinctly different, though still a bit familiar. I also appreciate how they stuck to the real storyline, rather than adding in elements that weren't even in the book. I also appreciate how they mentioned Tom Bombadil!
I must say that their most daunting challenge was that they had to compress several hundreds of pages (or 14 hours of film- which, even then, still couldn't do the book justice) into less than 3 1/2 hours of musical.
Overall, particularly if being a bit of a 'classic fantasy' freak like myself, this would be a nice show to go watch. I think if you have no clue at all what the story's about, I think it would be rather hard to follow, as the story moves at a very fast clip; it becomes even incomprehensible at times - and I actually -know- what the story's about. It doesn't have the time to go into the richness of the history, geography, politics, or legends of Middle Earth. Certainly, that takes away from the appreciation of the story. But, the set design and costumes were very good; I was particularly impressed with how they did the Balrog, Shelob, and the Nazgul. The songs were not terribly memorable, but then I figure I've got to give the singers a bit of a break; they had just done a matinee just prior...