Let's start with the puppet because the puppet is amazing. This King Kong is 20 feet high and operated by 14 people, four of whom do its facial expressions. And, just like a real animal, it conveys so much emotion with its face and body: Fear, rage, joy, sadness, confusion.
It conveys, in fact, much more nuance than its human companions.
That's because something key is missing in the rest of this musical. Heart. Also, purpose. And passion. Plus, the book is lifeless, the lyrics are lackluster and the music is forgettable. There is no dramatic tension here; instead, there are only theme park thrills. Admittedly, they are pretty thrilling. When Kong gallops through 1930s Midtown Manhattan, smoke, lasers and giant video screen projections combine to give the CGI illusion that he is bounding straight out toward the audience. If a roller coaster were involved, it would be a perfect ride.
But the show isn't at Universal Studios, it's on Broadway. No matter how terrifically cool the puppet is, theater needs something more in order to be successful like narrative tension, character development, emotional surprise, reflection, and insight. A few good, toe-tapping songs never hurt either.
Perhaps it never rises to the level of, well, theater, because the original "King Kong" was a troubling story. In it, a frightened young actor, Ann Darrow (Fay Wray in the 1933 version) is kidnapped by a monster gorilla who wants to (perhaps sexually) posses her, after she's brought to Skull Island by an unscrupulous director who wants to shoot a film. Because that's all that women are good for, of course, sexual possession. There were also wince-inducing racial overtones — the odious comparison of black people to wild, monstrous gorillas has a long history, though the creators denied they meant any such thing. And of course, American racists have long played on the pernicious social fear of white women being sexually taken by black men as a way to pervert culture and politics.
In the contemporary production, Jack Thorne wrote the book, which is a surprise, because he also penned the luminous play "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child." But here, Thorne tries to turn Ann (Christiani Pitts) into some kind of feminist warrior, one who regrets that she helped capture Kong, who is never afraid (and so can't scream when she's supposed to be acting), and who just doesn't want to have to wait in a bread line anymore. And director Drew McOnie has cast the black actor Pitts as Ann, and actors of many races in the ensemble (unusual for Broadway, and very welcome).
It's a noble impulse, but it feels like the creators are just running scared, which makes this musical wishy-washy. We know what they don't want — for a woman to be sexually assaulted for our prurient interest, for racial fears to be traded on — but what do they want? What is this show about? It feints too hard at feminism and is just not rousing enough to be legitimately entertaining. It also never offers us sharp observations about life or tells us enough about most of the characters for us to care if they live or die, which is something that even Memorial Day, big-budget-thrillers achieve. Instead, almost everyone on stage is shallow and glassy-eyed, as if they themselves were the puppets.
The big exception (besides the big guy himself) is the assistant to the film director, Lumpy, played by Erik Lochtefeld. In his Lumpy, we see genuine conflict, sorrow and resolve, and a sense that, in different, less coldly commercial hands, "King Kong" might have been something great.
"King Kong," book by Jack Thorne, directed and choreographed by Drew McOnie. At the Broadway Theater in an open run.