King Kong – The Broadway Theatre, New York

Christiani Pitts in King Kong at The Broadway Theatre, New York. Picture: Joan Marcus

King Kong continues at The Broadway Theatre, New York.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The common critical wisdom regarding the deep, deep pocket musical spectacle King Kong – which after years of revamping its original 2013 try in Melbourne, Australia has finally arrived on Broadway – is almost a knee-jerk response of loving the puppet and the puppetry while disparaging or downplaying the rest of the show.

Well, in my minority report, the 20-foot-tall animatronic puppet of Kong – as you have undoubtedly read or heard – is indeed a gasp-inducing marvel, but there’s plenty to admire elsewhere in this shrewdly put together rendition of an oft-told tale.

It’s a tale which first saw the light of day in the classic 1933 movie, which, way before the advent of computer-generated imagery, delivered all the thrills and chills of an honest-to-goodness nightmare.

In the unlikely case that you’ve forgotten, the plot concerns a venturesome filmmaker, Carl Denham, who sails off to a mysterious island where he’s heard that something phenomenal lives. That something turns out to be a really giant ape, who takes a fancy to the proposed film’s leading lady, the beauteous Ann Darrow. He hauls her off to his jungle hideout, but is finally subdued by the film crew, chained and taken off to New York, where he’s put on display in a Broadway theatre. It doesn’t take much, though, for him to break loose and out of the theatre, rampaging through New York in a climactic search for Ann.

Jack Thorne, whose credits most impressively include Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, is the last of several playwrights who have tried their hand at writing the book for this musical. His script works hard at developing the tale’s mythic qualities and in many ways it succeeds. It sometimes seems more fairytale or fable than horror story, but it also gives the character of Ann Darrow a contemporary feminist streak and puts her without question front and centre in the story.

She’s not the perpetual screamer who shrieked and fainted her way through the original movie. Now, she’s an independent-minded girl fresh from the farm, defiantly standing up to the constant rejection she finds in trying to make her way as a performer into New York theatre. She accepts on her own terms the offer from a filmmaker to become involved in his mysterious adventure. When taken off by Kong, she deals with him in similar fashion. Furthermore, when he’s wounded fending off a giant serpent, she knows how to heal him by applying mud, a trick learned from her farmer dad.

Her bonding with Kong is, in Thorne’s script, also an appreciation of the wonders that nature has bestowed upon this world and should not be destroyed for monetary gain. As Ann – while sorrowing over the fate that has befallen Kong but grateful for having known him – sings in the show’s final moments: “Can you feel the wonder… It can change you forever.” The message may feel a little grafted on, but how can you argue with it?

While race is never mentioned, the fact that Ann is being played by an African-American, Christiani Pitts, adds yet another dimension to the role. That’s especially resonant in the endless rejections she faces in her job-hunting in New York early in the show.

Pitt also brings to the role great feminine strength, a heroic stage presence (she fearlessly climbs on the back of the giant ape and rides him boldly while he trammels the city’s streets), and a voice that fulfils expressively the belting demands of the various anthems written for her by songwriter Eddie Perfect.

So, let’s hear it for Pitts as well as for her co-star puppet. And she’s giving her all without the phalanx of puppeteers, animatronic operators and the amplified and altered voice artist who assist Kong at just about every inch of his formidable self.

The only other two humans of principal interest are Eric William Morris as the filmmaker Denham, and Erik Lochtefeld as an older guy named Lumpy, Denham’s long-time go-fer.

Morris manages to make Denham’s boyish egotism and eventual vileness somewhat palatable with a big helping of musical theatre pizzazz. Lochtefeld does what he can with Lumpy, instilling some genuine sincerity into a rather extraneous character, who seems to be functioning as a spokesman for whatever goodness is left in mankind along with Ann.

As for the music, the standout element is the orchestral scoring by Marius de Vries. More than a third of the “musical numbers” are pure orchestral pieces, and they are richly ear-filling, heightening the mood and excitement at just about every turn in a manner that is more operatic than simply cinematic background music. (However, it should be said that Max Steiner’s background music for the original film is nothing to sneeze at.)

The songs, mostly written by Perfect, are not classics, but they fulfil the demands of the story nicely, with varying moods and tempos, and in what’s becoming rather rare among the new crop of scores, they often actually sound like songs with pertinent lyrics rather than meandering monologues. Ann’s opening number is a case in point: “Here comes Ann, completely out of place/Everything she owns in just one case/Just what New York needs; another face.”

At the helm, director-choreographer Drew McOnie masterfully pulls all the elements together into one coherent and affecting piece of musical theatre storytelling. His choreography has a contagious vibrancy, whether his dancers are construction workers building the New York skyscrapers at the start of the show, or the hysterical citizenry of the city trying to avoid the crushing Kong coming down their streets. (You may feel like joining them in their frenzy, when Kong comes perilously close to the edge of the stage threatening to make his way right into the audience of The Broadway Theatre.)

Certainly, kudos are due to all those who have and are bringing Kong to life. Along with the often quite visible on-stage puppeteers, they include Sonny Tilders, creature designer; Gavin Robbins, Kong/aerial movement director; and Jon Hoche, the growling, roaring, sometimes murmuring voice of Kong.

On the more traditional side of things, Peter England’s scenic and projection designs, Roger Kirk’s costumes, Peter Mumford’s lighting and Peter Hylenski’s sound are all terrific, in particular, how they evoke the aura of Depression-era New York and the abstracted mysteriousness of the ocean voyage to Kong’s domain of Skull Island.

As you may have gathered by now, this King Kong is more than just an eye-popping puppet show. It’s a boldly conceived, legitimate piece of musical theatre.

Ron Cohen