The Lord of the Rings: A Musical Tale has received excellent reviews since it premiered in Sydney in January. It is set to run in Perth from 19 March, ahead of highly anticipated seasons in Melbourne and the Gold Coast. Nearly every review so far has mentioned the incredible performance by Laurence Boxhall, who plays Gollum. The Scoop had the pleasure of chatting with Laurence ahead of the Perth season. Laurence talks all things Lord of the Rings, including his preparation for the role and deconstructing Tolkien.
What was the whole process like working with the director to create the character of Gollum? How did you both determine how he should move around and speak?
The first step, even before I got into the rehearsal room, and even throughout the audition process, was going back to the books. Tolkien is so descriptive of Gollum’s voice, his sibilant S’s, his speech pattern, and the quality of the sound he describes as coming from the back of the throat.
The books are very descriptive of how Gollum moves and how characters describe him as moving like a spider in some sections or more like a ghost in others. So I went back with a notebook, and I reread The Hobbit and then The Lord of the Rings trilogy, making notes of all the times that someone references anything about Gollum and Sméagol to try and come up with a complete framework.
And then with that, looking at how Tolkien describes Gollum’s internal monologue or his opinions about things because that then dictates how he sounds and how he moves as well, depending on his given circumstances. So I’m taking that into the rehearsal process and working with the director. I’ll just make offers and talk about the framework I have. And then there’s the stagecraft element and imbuing that with something that’s truthful or organic to the character.
It was this wonderful symbiosis of using the texts as this Bible, because everything is there for you to pull out. And then, of course, understanding that a lot of people only have the Andy Serkis performance as their framework, who also did a similar thing, and as we all know, did it so iconically.
Tolkien himself did a recording of how Gollum should sound, so I also referenced that. I know Andy Serkis referenced that too. So they won’t be a million miles away from what Tolkien originally had in his head, because he told us exactly how he thinks he should sound.
That sounds like a very long research process.
A very enjoyable one. It is no chore to have to revisit the books, they are so well written.
Sure, but if you skimmed over some of the non-Gollum pages, I don’t think anyone would really have a problem.
That’s the trick because so much of Gollum is referenced in the non-Gollum pages, in the bits where we’re not with Sam and Frodo, because Gandalf talks about him. And there are all sorts of references in Lothlórien as well. When they’re in The Fellowship of the Ring, there are so many things that are mentioned about him. It is a commitment, having to sit down and in the short time before rehearsals, from being cast to starting rehearsals going, ‘Okay, I need to get through all of these books.’ But it’s a gold mine, an absolute gold mine for an actor.
There are so many grand, virtuous characters in the entire Lord of the Rings story, and Gollum is, of course, not one of them. How does it feel to be cast as Gollum, who, comparatively, is such a slimy, grotesque creature of a character?
Looking back on my career, I’ve played some really horrible people. I’m kind of thinking, ‘Okay, am I being typecast as this weird goblin boy? I’m not sure.’ But it’s fascinating, and it’s such a joy and a treat to play complex characters. The way that I’ve certainly tried to approach Gollum is that you can’t think about characters in terms of being evil or slimy or anything like that because you can’t play that. There is only the character and what they perceive to be true and what they want to achieve.
For Gollum, you have to approach everything sympathetically in order to understand why he feels certain ways about certain things. And because it is a condensed story, having an awareness of the back story is helpful. Not only has Gollum been tortured by Sauron and by Orcs, but he’s also been imprisoned by Elves. Gandalf had to beat him up to get information out of him. It’s not clear-cut black and white. It’s not that he is just evil for evil’s sake. This is a character that has been really put through the wringer.
And so, trying to approach this sympathetically and understand why he feels certain ways, why he feels neglected, and then why, when he’s given a glimmer of hope and he feels appreciated and seen and valued, how much of a fishhook that is. And how wonderful that is for the Sméagol part of him, this juvenile part that was never given a chance to develop properly because it was taken away from him against his will.
It’s fascinating, and getting to mine into all those things is hugely rewarding. Because I think it naturally makes you a more empathetic person when you have to play someone like Gollum. When you have to live in that world and understand why he feels the way he feels and why he is the way that he is. It just broadens your perspective a little bit, because the more research you do into the character, and the more you kind of take that lid off Pandora’s Box, the more comes out.
I was made aware of your acting history, and you have played many physical character roles, very eclectic stuff. Do you think you were submitted to play Gollum because of your history in very physical character roles?
I actually submitted myself for it. I think I sort of naturally gravitated towards it because I’ve always loved Gollum. I vividly remember listening to the audiobook as a kid, and my Dad would always call me Gollum Toes growing up because I’d hang off door frames and scurry around. I loved the movies, so I’ve always had an interest in him.
When I heard this thing was happening, I was just wrapping up Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in Melbourne, which is as far away from playing Gollum as you could possibly get. And I asked to see the breakdown of all the characters and what instruments they needed to play. Because we all play our own instruments on stage, there’s no orchestra or anything like that. You won’t see Gollum with a tuba though, Gollum doesn’t play anything. But I went through it, and I saw that it would be a physical role, and the vocal part was in my range. And so I thought, of all the characters, this is probably the best one I have a shot at.
I’ve always been quite a physical actor and I enjoy climbing and working out. So when it came to going through the various rounds of auditions, and I think I had to do about six or seven rounds across several months, when we got to the physical ones, that was something I definitely felt quite comfortable with.
It’s a world with that sort of level of exploration, that kind of very inhuman movement, which is something that I really enjoy doing. And although I’ve never had to necessarily do inhuman movements like this before, I’ve had to do a lot of very strange body movements as part of characters. So I thought, ‘Okay, this is something that I know I would get something out of, I know that I can bring something to it.’
Gollum has been compared to several Shakespeare characters, where they start off as being seemingly not very important, but as the story progresses, they become deceptively and quite surprisingly, the most important character in the story. Were there any discussions between the cast and the crew about the deeper, interesting, symbolic ideas about The Lord of the Rings in general?
I can’t speak for the rest of the cast because when I’m Gollum, I’m only interacting with Sam and Frodo, so I can’t speak to what anyone else did in the room. But it’s such a tricky line to walk, because Tolkien himself, writing these books and this amazing story, post First World War, post industrialisation and the decimation of his countryside and the greenery of the world that he knew, it’s so easy to look at these books and pull from Tolkien’s real-life experience. But Tolkien himself very vocally hated allegory.
And so it’s a really tricky thing, as an actor, and also as a Tolkien fan, to respect the professor and his distaste for allegory and try to literally pull anything out from that. Because although it would help you as an actor, it is not what Tolkien would want. It’s an impossible thing to look at Gollum and ask, ‘Is he the return service person that comes back and gets hooked on morphine and is traumatised and battered and bruised and potentially tortured, and then becomes addicted to things? Is that what he is?’
If it works for you as the actor, sure, you can use that, but you can’t lean too far into it. Trying to pull too many parallels is a really strange sort of snake eating itself situation, and it’s one that I struggled with a lot in the rehearsal process.
Gandalf talks all the way through the stories about how there is hope for Gollum’s redemption because you have to believe the best. And Frodo is always at risk, because Sméagol was about Frodo’s age when he was consumed by the ring against his will, and then lived for another 600 years or so. I know that when it was the Frodo and Gollum scenes, we definitely talked about how Frodo is figuring out ways to use Gollum. He uses him as a tool to get to what he needs without Gollum really knowing.
It’s such a challenging place to go to as an actor, and a really rewarding one. It’s fantastic to have all these things to think on, far better than the alternative of not having enough questions. But there has been no clear-cut thing because Tolkien wouldn’t want it to be read that way.
Lord of the Rings – A Musical Tale runs for a limited season from 19 March – 6 April at Crown Theatre, Perth.
The tour continues to Melbourne from 26 April and the Gold Coast from 4 July.
Tickets on sale now via Ticketmaster.
Website: https://lotronstage.com/
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Photo credits: Daniel Boud
