I need to preface this report by reiterating that this production is still in previews, the producers have deep pockets and no doubt it will continue to evolve until the show is “frozen” - a theatre term which means no more changes are allowed before press night to allow the cast to settle in.
The company have been adept at planting news stories to promote the show so in that spirit here’s another, my observations from the final stage of its journey to opening night.
A daring project of this scale seems to elicit conflicting feelings in New York theatre folk who are either hoping it’ll prove a success or are gleefully anticipating a turkey. In fact it’s neither one or the other. And I wonder if we should be judging it on the level of a theme park attraction rather than a musical drama. We want scares, we want spectacle we want jaw dropping moments and i doubt if anyone in last night’s audience was looking for the psychological depths or sophistication of a Stephen Sondheim musical.
The opening is breathtaking. If a big ape wasn’t stealing all the attention this production may have been judged a thing of wonder based on Peter England’s exquisite projection design alone. The lights come up on a masterful blending of physical scenery and moving projection which depicts the erection of towering skyscrapers defining New York. It’s a place of dust and cranes and girders and man rising into the sky. This is the world in which our title character will clamber up to meet his fate at the top of an iconic tower.
The British director and choreographer Drew McConie stages a powerful opening number combining aerial work based on the builders hanging from the ropes and girders of the construction work and fast snappy choreography that’s all about hands reaching to the sky. Later, in another lovely choreographic touch a gang of threatening sailors begin to slowly take on gorilla movements. He really has done a great job within the limitations of the source material and having a gigantic prop as his star.
Having established the world of the show our central character Ann arrives, a wannabe chorus girl from the country. Through the crowd she comes carrying her suitcase and singing about making it in the big city. This cliche has been so widely spoofed in everything from ANNIE, to 42ND STREET, to MACK AND MABLE, to THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE that I’m surprised the creative team attempted to bring new life to it. They can’t and there follows a beautifully executed but inevitably derivative montage of our girl failing auditions and ending up queuing for soup and sneaking into a restaurant to get warm. There she meets Carl Dunham, a persuasive young man who offers her a film role if she’ll travel by boat with him to a mystery location.
The boat at sea is one of the most beautiful pieces of stage projection that I’ve ever seen. A few pieces of scenery remain in place but it’s framed by a vast skyline that rises and falls so effectively that the characters are convincingly riding the waves in the little vessel. It’s on board that we meet the third central character Lumpy, Denham’s loveable old henchman. Smee to his Captain Hook and a surrogate father to Ann.
No sign of Kong yet but they don’t keep us in suspense for long and we get our first glimpse of him, just his teeth lit by a beam of moonlight, as he moves in on Fay through the darkness of a jungle island, the boat’s destination. The plot of course is that then Denham lures Kong into his clutches with Ann as bait and takes him to be exhibited in New York. The monkey, fearing for Anne’s safety, escapes with her and runs riot through Manhattan in a chase that ends at the top of the Empire State Building.
If you’re interested enough to read this you’ve probably already seen photographs or on-line video clips of the gigantic King Kong puppet in action. I was worried it would be an anticlimax but I needn’t have. It’s a beautiful piece of work, a vast marionette that takes a whole squad of puppeteers in black clambering all over it to make it move as expressively as it does and every bit as effectively as the horses in that other animal puppet spectacular, WAR HORSE. His features are radio controlled and allow for a delicate movements of facial muscles that are so nuanced that he has all the variety of expression you’d find in a real life ape.
The show makes no attempt to hide the network of strings and pulleys that operate Kong or the operators, known as the King’s Company, who strenuously heave him around the stage. This is an excellent decision. Because we can blatantly see how it’s done we’re not pre-occupied with trying to work this out and are free to engage our imagination in investing the puppet with life. In a lovely touch the Kings Company are so present that when the ape is curious about something they’ll look around at what he’s contemplating too.
But critics aren’t going to be simply reviewing this as an expensive puppet show and, rightly or wrongly, there’ll be the expectation that it satisfies as a credible musical as well. And there are a few inherent problems with this.
The symphonic underscoring by Marius De Vries is as powerful as you can wish but songwriter Eddie Perfect has had the impossible task of composing songs which can compete for the audience’s attention and breath fresh life into the extensive broadway pastiche numbers. He’s very good at this period stuff but in the freer material establishing character, motivation and mood he has come up with a series of power ballades and ensemble numbers with a more urban feel that comes dangerously close to mirroring the score for recent movie musical THE GREATEST SHOWMAN. There’s even a couple of attempts to create an And I am Telling You moment from DREAMGIRLS. You’ve got to feel sorry for Christiani Pitts, singing her heart out as Ann whilst a gigantic puppet is usually upstaging her.
The popular culture of 1930 America which gave rise to the first celebrated King Kong film had very different socio-political sensitivities to our own. Back then the material suggests that Americans must have been absolutely terrified of the African continent and it’s easy to see the story as a metaphor for this and racial tensions of the period. The casting of a black actress in the female lead happily takes the sting out of all this.
Of course now-a-days we can’t have a female victim as a central character so Anne is re-conceived as a feisty modern gal who won’t even scream when she’s frightened. Pitts really does an amazing job, she’s gawky, endearing, funny, and classy when required and charged with delivering reams of dialogue, alone on stage with Kong, during which she has to not only voice her feelings but must keep describing what the ape must be thinking too.
The script is very mediocre. The production has gone through many drafts by various writers and the current version is by superstar British writer Jack Thorne (A recent Tony award winner for HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD) The producers must have kept a very tight reign on him because all he’s been allowed to write is cheesy dialogue that strings together Hallmark greetings card platitudes about being true to yourself and breaking free to follow your dreams. At one point writer and lyricist attempt to draw parallels between the way society views women and treats performing animals.
Crucially there’s a gaping black hole in the middle of the script where the character of the ruthless explorer, film maker and showman Carl Denham should be, he’s affably and unremarkably played by Eric William Morris. But he’s got nothing to work with, the dark heart of the show’s real monster is left unexplored. Ann’s relationship with her handsome saviour is barely addressed and they even fudge the end of his story. We simply see him silently escorted off by cops.
The other factor which I hope the creative team recognise and fix is we simply see too much of Kong. The challenge with puppetry is that if the puppet becomes inert for even 10 seconds it looses credibility as a living thing. There are way too many slow scenes in which he doesn’t seem to be doing much at all, although I did love his noble stillness in the profound despair of his imprisonment. There are three or four jaw dropping Kong moments which drew gasps and spontaneous applause including a wonderful scene when he threatens to come into the auditorium and attack us. The chase sequences are extraordinarily vivid, if I were on the team I’d want to restrict his appearances to his best bits and not have him hanging around so much.
There’s no solution I fear to the scene at the top of the Empire State Building. It’s implausible in the film and by the time we reach this point everyone seems to have run out of ideas as a little platform rises up through stage smoke to represent the very top of the building emerging through clouds.
More thought needs to go into his jungle enemy, the gigantic snake, too. It’s about as menacing as a sock and lacks the sophistication of movement to even rear up threatening attack.
I’m so glad I saw King Kong. Yes, if you require it to hold together as a credible, satisfying and coherent whole it falls short but I left satisfied that it had delivered several of the most spectacular and breathtaking moments I’ve ever seen in theatre. I will remember it for the rest of my life. And that’s got to be worth the price of a ticket and an evening of anyone’s time.
I can’t wait to see it again
Doubtless the producers will bring it to London although we have few theatres in the West End big enough to house it. Perhaps if BAT OUT OF HELL runs out of steam it could move into the Dominion. I can’t wait to see it again.
American writer Matthew Lopez’ enormous play has already written itself into theatrical canon since a widely beloved premiere at the Young Vic, so a move to the West End was a natural fit. A two-part play coming in at nearly 7 hours, The Inheritance reworks E. M. Forster’s Howards End into a vast story of gay men’s love in contemporary New York.