tolkien | responses

"Run, don't walk, to get tix for Tolkien at Pacific Theatre (it's selling fast). A mature play, by a mature playwright, with super acting by all concerned. Ron Reed pulls off playing Tolkien with amazing depth, which wouldn't be a surprise, except that he had to step into the role at the last minute, after writing and directing the play. This is live theatre breathing life into two men who have become flattened by their status as icons. Here they are fully human, fully flawed, and their friendship likewise. Superb end to a superb season. Bravo."
- Karen C., audience response

"This is such a wonderfully ambitious show and it was wild seeing Ron Reed stepping in as a last second subsitute for his cast's sidelined title character. I was floored that by the end of three acts I wasn't just completely engaged with the world, but the first thing I wanted to ask Ron was, 'how many scenes did you cut?'"
- Mark Leiren-Young, audience email

"I LOVE the final scene - the appropriate pang of melancholy - and the final line struck me as beautiful and intriguing. One of the best final lines to a play, ever. Also - congratulations again Ron on your tremendous accomplishment. I left the theatre saying how I enjoyed spending that time with all the characters.”
- Katharine Venour, audience email

"Entering the intimate, underground confines of Pacific Theatre for Tolkien, there is an immediate and palpable magic in the air. At centre stage, set designer Drew Facey has stamped an elegant, ornate compass rose onto rich wooden floorboards. Hanging down over the space are leafy branches, leading back to thickly root trees that seem to grow out of the wells. It is a perfect setting to explore the odd and intricate friendship of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis."
- Brian Paterson, Vancouver Presents

"Farthing’s unstintingly generous Lewis and Dixon’s droll and doughty Warnie... Presiding over the whole scene is a sculpted larch tree so handsome that the characters – poets, after all – periodically stand back and stare just to admire its beauty.”
- Lincoln Kaye, Vancouver Observer

"The script balances these themes in an impressive fashion, and all the while educating a Tolkien-novice such as myself about the rich history behind some of literature’s most significant works... Aesthetically, Tolkien is a complete triumph.”
- Sebastien Ochoa Mendoza, UBC Players Club

"As Lewis, Ian Farthing is understated and persuasively human.”
- Colin Thomas, Fresh Sheet

"Ingram is brilliant as novelist and playwright Charles Williams, the most eccentric of the group.”
- John Jane, reviewvancouver