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The Hobbit: Kids' Theater Takes on Tolkien classic

By Mark Collins, Camera Theater Critic
August 8, 2003

WHEN • 7 p.m. today, 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday, 11 a.m. Sunday
WHERE • Boulder High School, 17th Street and Arapahoe Avenue
TICKETS • $7-$10
CALL • (303) 245-8150

For the record, Charlotte Hanks has never seen the two "Lord of the Rings" movies. And the 10-year-old stopped reading J.R.R. Tolkien's classic "The Hobbit" after a few chapters when she found another book she thought was more interesting.

So, how did Hanks — who is cast as Gollum in the Rocky Mountain Theatre for Kids production of "The Hobbit: A Musical" — come up with a dead-on, creepy-yet-vulnerable voice for the withered, slinking creature who lives in a gloomy den underneath the Misty Mountain?

"My friend Leah, she was helping me with my lines when I tried out for the part," Hanks explains. "We were going to Water World and we just came up with (Gollum's voice) in the car."

Not everyone in "The Hobbit" cast has a friend who serves as artistic inspiration. Nonetheless, 52 Boulder County and Denver kids, ranging from 7 to 14 years old, will present the musical, which plays today through Sunday at Boulder High School.

In case you're unfamiliar with the story, John Kearns, who plays Thorin, leader of the Dwarves, can fill you in.

"Bilbo Baggins is this normal Hobbit who doesn't like adventure or anything abnormal," says Kearns, 12, about the play's lead character. "And then these dwarves and a wizard make him come on this quest to steal back the Lonely Mountain from this dragon. They have all these adventures and go through all these dangerous places. They go by trolls and goblins and elves. Finally, they get to Lonely Mountain and Bilbo picks up this ring and it makes him invisible. In the play, Bilbo ends up killing the dragon."

The script is the only adaptation of the story authorized by Tolkien. It was published in 1972, with book by Ruth Perry, lyrics by David Rogers and music by Allan Jay Friedman. The songs range in style from blues to jazzier numbers to even tango-influenced sounds.

Michelle Romeo, 32, runs Rocky Mountain Theatre for Kids and is directing the musical. Romeo started the children's theater company in the back yard of her Boulder home eight years ago. It's grown into a company that offers year-round classes in several performing disciplines and two summer camps each year culminating with full-scale productions.

One of Romeo's goals is to "challenge the idea of what children's theater is." She tries to do that by bringing artistic and cultural diversity to the troupe's productions, and "The Hobbit" is no exception.

The dragon, named Smaug, is played by 11 actors in a costume with Chinese flair. And the choreography displays a range of styles, according to Romeo, including modern, jazz and ballet, as well as movement styles from other cultures.

She also added a symbolic character to the story called The Lady of Hope, who "enters some of the scenes where some of the characters are really down and out."

There even are two scenes that involve extensive stage combat.

Romeo has a team of people directing the fight scenes, creating the choreography, directing and performing the music and building the sets and costumes. The children in the camp also have been directly involved with some of the technical elements, as well as working on the various aspects of the show.

Rocky Mountain Theatre for Kids camp begins at 9 a.m. each morning, and the actors are involved in music, dance or staging rehearsals throughout much of the day. The final hour of the day involves what Romeo calls "minor classes," which focus on four different disciplines — makeup, set design and construction, dance and singing.

While Romeo has overseen the entire camp, she's worked most closely with the actors, helping them to understand and create their characters — a part of the process she says she enjoys the most.

The script calls for Bilbo to become invisible when he puts the powerful ring on his finger. In order to help Hanks understand what that would be like for Gollum, Romeo created a simple acting exercise.

"We put a blindfold on me so I got the feeling of what it would be like not to see him," Hanks says. "I kind of felt like what it was to not see anything. I had to listen to (Bilbo's) feet."

Hanks, it turns out, is one of the few actors in the cast who hadn't read the Tolkien classic nor seen the "Lord of the Rings" movies. In fact, Romeo — who says she wasn't a Rings fanatic when she started the project — has leaned on the actors' knowledge throughout the process.

"The kids, half the time, are directing me," Romeo says. "They'll say, 'Michelle, actually the history of so-and-so is this, and so-and-so would do that.' And I say, 'That sounds great.'"

Contact Mark Collins at (303) 473-1369 or

theater@dailycamera.com.