King Kong and The Queens

King Kong Broadway

Editor’s Note: HOTCHKA is thrilled to welcome Stephen Mosher, our man on Broadway, to the team. This is his first of what we hope will be many reviews of show on (and off) the Great White Way, and anything else that strikes his fancy.

My husband and I saw King Kong on Broadway. A mere 90 minutes before we saw the play a friend told us ‘the book is crap, the songs are forgettable and the play isn’t sure what it wants to be.’ None of this was news to us. We’ve been living in New York for the past 204 days since the play opened on October 5, 2018: we have heard what people think of King Kong. Never ones to allow someone else’s opinion to become our own, we bought our tickets and allowed the excitement of being in a theater to take us over. So when our friend dropped their unsolicited and lackluster estimation of the Broadway spectacle in our enthusiastic laps, my husband simply replied ‘yes but The Monkey, The Monkey, The Monkey’ and, not surprisingly, our friend proclaimed that if the monkey is what we were going for, we would have a good time. The truth is that when I walk through the door of a theatre, I can usually count on having a good time. The theatre is my temple and I am there to worship.

Upon our arrival, the Broadway Theatre was full of tourists; people who don’t know how to behave in a theater but who keep the theatres economically up and running and, so, get a kind of free pass when it comes to wearing Daisy Dukes and flip flops and eating buckets of Popeye’s fried chicken during the ballad or texting during the blackouts. It’s just something that New Yorkers and reverent theatre-goers are learning to deal with, and the learning curve is not always especially easy on the nerves, which is why I always get an assistive listening device. At least that way I can shut them out audibly.

Settled into our remarkably good discount seats and leafing through our Playbills, I took note that right in front of us were three people whom I believe were industry professionals — at least one of them was at one time because I photographed him years ago when he was a chorus boy. I can kind of sort of get it when tourists chug their drinks and don’t pay attention and talk during the show and look at their phones and don’t clap for the performances. However I can never understand when industry professionals refuse to find the good in a Broadway Show — even if the good is to cheer on your fellow industry artisans. On its worst day, a bad production has a beautiful thing going for it: the employment of actors, dressers, costume, lighting and set artisans, union ushers, merch salespeople and many more. There are a lot of people whose lives are made better by a Broadway show and they are all the people who are gainfully employed by that show. Sometimes the lives of people made better by the existence of a show are even the audience members who find something to love in the show. We can never know if the play we are seeing is the first ever play for the person sitting next to us, or a stage adaptation of that audience member’s favorite novel, or the Broadway debut of that person’s child or sibling or spouse. So when a former Broadway chorus boy sits in a theater and refuses to celebrate, even in the smallest way, it hurts my heart — particularly since they have been up on the stage performing for unappreciative audiences, something every actor has done at least once.

These three men in front of us refused to applaud after musical numbers where the dancers performed Herculean feats of daring-do, refused to applaud after the songs in which singers rose their voices to astronomical heights, refused to applaud when puppeteers brought to life on stage a character that stood as tall as the proscenium arch. Were these three men to approach their theatre-going experience with more open minds, with more whimsy, with more generosity of spirit (to the actors and to the audience sitting near them) they would get a higher rate of return on their investment. By refusing to participate in the joy of being inside of a theater (a luxury some people cannot afford) they are wasting their money from the moment they cross the threshold. I admit that I am discerning (sometimes stingy) when it comes to standing ovations. Earn it, I say. But not with applause. Every waiter who serves me gets a tip. When you realize you are seeing something that isn’t up to your personal standards, you have a choice you can make to either enjoy it for what it is, what you can glean from it, or you can spend three hours sulking at the cost of a Broadway theatre ticket — too high a cost for this working boy. And when I watched them sitting there, jaws clenched, arms folded, cheeks sucked in, all I could think of was the word ‘Twat’. Three gay twats with neither joy nor generosity in their lives, or, at least, in their hearts. That’s what I thought. Three. Gay. Twats. And then I let go of it and returned my focus to where it belonged: the play.

Which I happened to enjoy.

King Kong Broadway

Let’s start with the actors. It cannot be easy to be in a play that some have labeled sub-standard. Still, they get up on that stage and they get themselves into the story, commit to the action and put it all out there for us, the audience, and I have not one fault with any of these actors. They’ve all got lovely singing voices — indeed, I was shocked to hear how beautiful Eric William Morris (Carl Denham) sings after enjoying his work as a non-singing actor in the past. I didn’t get to see the full-time Ann Darrow, Christiani Pitts, but I did get to see her understudy, Kayla Davion, whose voice is as powerful as King Kong’s own voice. I could listen to her sing all day, so beautiful are the sounds coming from behind her teeth. I am, frankly, glad the leading lady was out this day. As for the rest of the acting company, there is lovely pathos from Erik Lochtefeld as Lumpy, some sexy macho mustache twisting from Rory Donovan as Captain Englehorn, and truly memorable campy comedy (not to mention Body Ody Ody) from Casey Garvin as Fake Carl. I’ve mentioned my admiration of the dance skills of the ensemble, under the creative control of director/choreographer Drew McOnie, whose work here I cannot criticize. The choreography is breathtaking, if, at times, superfluous; but we all paid Broadway prices and we saw every single penny up on that stage. No complaints from me. I can always watch a pretty chorus girl or boy point their toes and leap. It makes me happy.

Is Jack Thorne’s book crap? Pretty much. But it’s not KA-RAP. Are the Eddie Perfect songs forgettable? I guess not, since I woke the next morning singing the lovely lullaby ‘Full Moon’, which Ann Darrow sings to Kong. Are the songs derivative, perhaps reductive? Possibly. But were they terrible? No. Is the instrumental score by Marius De Vries electrifying? Yes. Were the actors bad? No, they were lovely. Were the dancers bad? No, they were astonishing. Were the men gorgeous? Life threateningly. So up to this point I am happy. Give me life threateningly gorgeous men and a diva with a big belt and I am all set for the next two plus hours. Add to that sets that were actual sets that were well done, add to that projections that enhanced greatly to the storytelling and we are hitting on all six cylinders. You know the trend in using projections instead of scenery can be a bit hit or miss but when the boat carrying Carl Denham and Ann Darrow to Skull Island actually rocks back and forth and reminds you that you have no Dramamine on you, when the night sky around an island named Skull or Manhattan suggests you take an iPhone pic of the moon, the projections are doing precisely what the designer wanted them to do. There was great lighting to further the mood of the piece. There was gorgeous costuming to put you in the era. There was dancing that was athletic and balletic. Everything that you need to tell a story on stage was there, even if the material upon which the story is built wasn’t the greatest.

But here’s the thing: Not everything is Angels in America, not everything is Hamilton. Sometimes something just gets to be middle of the road. Sometimes a trip to the theater is an entertainment, a chance to turn off your mind for a couple of hours. Sometimes it is just about telling a story and entertaining the masses. Until the moment that book and score that will not win any award parts ways and gives rise to the exceptional, to the extraordinary.

And … The Monkey, The Monkey, The Monkey.

I was slack-jawed the entire time Kong was on stage. He is gorgeous, he is glorious, he is gorillarific. I’m not talking about The Lion King where there are beautiful actors wearing beautiful costumes that emulate the beautiful animals that they represent. This is a lifeless piece of puppetry that hangs in the fly space of the theater when it isn’t needed, but that, the moment it is needed, is descended onto the stage where it magically becomes a He. The fact that there are humans working as a group to bring to life a puppet that stands several stories high inside of a Manhattan building boggles my mind. And bring him to life they did. I saw all the wires, I saw the puppeteers, I saw cables and handles and still I saw Kong. There are some ten or so actors/puppeteers who move about the stage using cables and their own manual dexterity to make Kong move. There are three technicians in a booth making his face and voice come to life. And there he was, alive and well and doing musical theater eight times a week on Broadway. He was a real life character on that stage. He had heart, soul, feelings, expressions, hopes, desires, needs. I related to him, I identified with him, I cheered for him. He thrilled me, excited me, made me laugh, made me gasp. He was hurt more than once and more than once I cried a tear or two for him. I loved him.

THAT’s storytelling. And as far as I’m concerned, that makes King Kong a good show. Flaws and all.

Storytelling. That’s all I want at the theater. And it is certainly worthy of my attention.

And my applause.

King Kong runs about 2 Hours 15 Minutes with one intermission.

King Kong Broadway