It cost a record £12.5m to bring Lord of the Rings to the London stage. Was it worth it? Susannah Clapp thinks not, and she’s not just blaming the people in charge of the production. “Take away the narrative drive, and Tolkien’s limitations become glaring. There’s the faux archaic language… There’s the sentimental ruralism and the worship of hierarchy: lots of little people with comical names being awed by silvery-tongued great ones. There’s the unadulterated blokesiness of it all… And alongside the macho swagger, there are all those elves. Tolkien really knew how to put the twee into tweedy.”