'King Kong': Stage adaptation goes ape

‘KING KONG’: King Kong & Christiani Pitts. Photo: Joan Marcus

KING KONG
Written by Jack Thorne
Score comped & produced by Marius de Vries
Songs by Eddie Perfect
Directed & choreographed by Drew McOnie
Broadway Theatre
1681 Broadway at 53rd Street
(212-239-6200), https://kingkongbroadway.com/

By David NouNou

Can’t act, can’t sing, and can’t dance—and this statement applies to the live people and not the animatronic gorilla on stage. Not because they don’t have the capabilities; they just don’t have the material.

Throughout the evening while watching this $35 million “disastravaganza” import from Australia, one keeps wondering if this was an intentional musical or something concocted as an Australian version of Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom (lead producers of Mel Brooks’ The Producers) to create one of the worst musicals ever conceived and bilk old lady investors of millions of dollars?

Anyone who has seen the original 1933 movie with Fay Wray, the 1976 version with Jessica Lange or the 2005 Peter Jackson version with Naomi Watts or even last year’s Kong: Skull Island would have the intelligence to know there is no way to adapt this genre into a musical format for the stage. Not even if you were on the most powerful hallucinogenic drug conceived “ever” can one visualize this even as a camp piece.

In a nutshell, this version has a poor girl from the South, Ann Darrow (Christiani Pitts), coming to Broadway to become a star in 1931. All reject her. One starving, cold night in a hash house, smarmy film director Carl Denham (Eric William Morris) “discovers” her. He convinces her to sign up with him and he’ll make her a star. And off they go by steamship to Skull Island and you know the rest.

What you don’t know is all the hubris that went into this musical. The book is hackneyed, the score is bland and unmemorable, the acting—let’s just skip that one—the choreography is 2018 supposedly set in 1931 and in every scene, it is basically the same steps in different tempo. However, the worst crime is yet to come. Act II has the gang back in New York along with Kong and the director, Carl Denham recreates their entire journey as a musical set to the stage. Even Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom couldn’t have created such a mess as hard as they would have tried. Where is “Springtime for Hitler and Germany” when you need it?

I give the show one star not because anything in it merited that high a score but for those soulful eyes of Kong himself. He is amazingly constructed and the best thing about the show, and he understands his part and displays more heart, soul and character than anyone else on that stage. He has suffered enough; this show is his ultimate humiliation.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published November 14, 2018
Reviewed at November 13, 2018 press performance.