Officially licensed by Middle-Earth Enterprises, Theatre On The Blue does what Warner Brothers could not, telling the story of The Hobbit in an hour with a team of six young actors.
The original story is epic on a scale only dwarfed (sorry) by its sequel The Lord Of The Rings, and with multiple kingdoms, races, a dragon and a battle with only one less army than there are actors, cuts were inevitable. Some are seemingly quite drastic, such as the loss of all the dwarves save Thorin (prompting a knowing joke later about Bilbo eating for 13 hobbits and Thorin for 13 dwarves), or the Battle of the 5 armies getting reduced to two paper cutouts repeatedly bodyslaming each other into submission.
Never-the-less, this is a very faithful, light-hearted adaptation of the children’s story, with a lot of verbatim book dialogue, some reproduced Tolkien drawings and even some plastic swords from the Peter Jackson films. Like the Hobbit films, it also has 2 episodes happen concurrently that occurred one after the other in the book, albeit different ones, here effectively aiding the fitting of the book into a single hour.
The compression is also aided here by fun and canny stagecraft, including projection, upbeat musical transitions, bubbles for smoke, and an impressive dragon puppet which can fit 4 people or into a football. Unfortunately, the staging seems to have been geared towards an end-on audience, causing some elements to be less effective for the audiences seated along the sides in this venue. However, the show moves at such a brisk clip that this is rarely an issue for long, and thanks to the passionate cast & crew, this production remains engaging throughout.
The cast inhabit their (in many cases many) roles with passion and humour, whether inhabiting food obsessed and innocent hobbits, fallen dwarves lords, disappearing wizards or elves, goblins, gollums and bits of dragon.
Thanks to an enthusiastic and energetic ensemble and effective staging, this adaptation hits in some fashion all the classic parts of Bilbo’s adventures and will entertains fans of all ages.
This show has concluded its run.
Reviewer: Oliver Giggins
Reviewed: 12th August 2026
North West End UK / Theatre Muse UK Rating:
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