The New York Times reports this morning that Toronto is tying its star to Tolkien and the new Lord of the Rings musical:
Next to the show's producers and the shorter-than-average actors hoping to find employment in future productions, the people with the most at stake work in Toronto's tourism industry. In recent years, Toronto has suffered the multiple blows of a post-9/11 tourism slump, SARS and the meteoric rise of both the Canadian dollar and the price of gas. These factors have helped cut the number of United States visitors from 3.2 million in 2000 to 2.7 million last year. And so Toronto's tourism officials, along with everyone from parking lot owners to hoteliers, are optimistically counting on "The Lord of the Rings" to bring in the fans.
The timing couldn't be better: Toronto is undergoing a season of unprecedented cultural growth and architectural renaissance. All over the city, entire blocks have been given over to construction projects as creative as the performances and artworks they are designed to showcase. The city's most prominent museums, art gallery, opera and theater companies are undergoing (or have recently completed) expansions costing nearly half a billion dollars. To the average Torontonian, the effect of this artistic rejuvenation is dazzling – sometimes literally so; sheer glass walls and shiny, reflective facades dominate much of the new architecture.
