Toronto's theatre critics are luke warm on the $28 million production of the LOTR musical. Both Richard Ouzounian at the Star and Kamal Al Solayee at the Globe give the play two stars. The CBC gives a nice little roundup of the play's shortcomings.

Even the Sun's John Colbourn gives it a so so review with the headline "Middling Earth."

Ouzounian calls the play dull and the music and script both problematic but he keeps his critical daggers in its sheath. Al Solayee doesn't though and has some juicy lines in his review including:

"All it needs is an engaging storytelling approach, an emotional arc, credible performances and a more coherent musical score."

and this great line:

"The rest of the score, by Indian composer A.R. Rahman and Finland's folk group Varttina, plays like someone has raided the world-music section at Indigo, picking up universal sounds and siren songs and hoping for the best."

But critics be damned, all that really matters in the end are box office returns and judging by how hard the Mirvish marketing machine is working this production looks like it'll do better than so so at the cash registers.

Torontoist's own theatre maniac Alison will be attending the show tonight, and will report back tomorrow.