J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic, three-part fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings is over 1,000 pages long. Adapting it as a three-hour musical (let alone a nine-hour movie trilogy) takes some doing. Strangely, even though the musical condenses the tale, zipping through the key events, this attempt feels slow at times, as if dragging its feet.

Rarmian Newton as Frodo, Wern Mak as Sam and Terence Crawford as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings: A Musical Tale. Photo © Daniel Boud

Featuring book and lyrics by Shaun McKenna and Matthew Warchus, and music by A.R. Rahman, Finnish folk band Värttinä and Christopher Nightingale, The Lord of the Rings: A Musical Tale was premiered in Toronto in 2006 under Warchus’s direction, followed by a London season, both of which lost money.

This new, further compressed production first saw the light of day in 2023 at the 220-seat Watermill Theatre in the UK. Directed by Paul Hart, it was a big hit.

Presented here in Sydney’s vastly bigger State Theatre, the show begins in delightful, ebullient fashion. As patrons enter the auditorium, Bilbo Baggins’ “eleventy-first” birthday party...