King Kong

King Kong is playing at the Broadway Theatre located at 1681 Broadway. It runs two hours thirty minutes with on intermission. It open ended run.

The musical is based on the classic 1933 Hollywood film.

It premiered in Melbourne, Australia in 2013.

The gorilla is twenty feet high and weighs 2,500 pounds.

Jack Thorne is the playwright. He wrote the stage play for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, based on the original new story by Thorne and J. K. Rowling and John Tiffany. It won the Olivier Award for Best New Play in 2017 and the 2018 Tony Award for Best Play.

Roger Kirk is the costume designer. He won a Tony Award for King and I (1996) and was nominated for a Tony Award in 2001 for 42nd Street.

The setting is 1931, New York City, the SS Wanderer and Skull Island.

Ann Darrow (Christiani Pitts) has come to New York City to be an actress. She goes on numerous acting auditions and gets nothing. One night she meets Carl Denham (Erik William Morris). He invites her to sit at his table as she is about to be thrown out of the restaurant. She is sitting at a table to stay warm. He tells the waiter she is with him. Carl tells her he is a film maker and would like to have her in a film he will be making. There is no script yet.

Carl convinces her to come on the SS Wanderer where he will film scenes of her acting. Lummy (Erik Lochtefeld) brings her coffee and make sure her costumes are okay. Captain Englehorn (Rory Donovan) and the crew want to know where they are going; they have been at sea for two months. Carl’s reply’s you’ve been paid don’t worry about.

They get off on Skull Island and explore it. Ann is attack by a giant serpent. A giant gorilla comes to her rescue. King Kong as he later named keeps Ann in his paws. She coaxes him to let her go. He roars! When Carl sees him he decides to have the crews capture him and bring him back to New York City.

In New York Carl is creating a show on how King Kong was found and then he would bring him out. He is selling tickets for the greatest thrill in a lifetime. Ann goes to see Kong. He is tied up and hasn’t eaten. He’s not the animal he was before. She feels so bad for him. He saved her life, she has to save his.

The rest is history so I’m not spoiling anything.

The thing that stands out as most impressive is the set and the awesome King Kong. Those alone are well worth seeing. You will be amaze and thrilled with King Kong. At one point Kong comes to the very front of the stage. The songs were ok and the dance routine I felt were overdone. But then who came to see that. The music added to the flow. The cast held their own against Kong. We are not surprise by the story but how it came to be. King Kong you rock!

Review by Rozanna Radakovich.

Photos by Annazor.

To read a candid interview with the cast, scroll down to the left for photos. Click on photos for this and other shows.