He can’t sing a note. They definitely don’t make tap shoes in his size. And, aside from some extremely expressive growls and roars, he doesn’t exactly sizzle at delivering dialogue.
And yet the title character in the musical version of “King Kong” is, without question, the dazzling star of the show. He alone carries the weight of this lavish production (capitalized at up to $36.5 million) on his broad, hirsute back.
Unfortunately, it’s not a very heavy burden. In fact, remove the big, strangely beautiful beast from the show, and the musical would collapse from its own weightlessness. The human characters — and they are so few they could handily fit in the big gorilla’s paw — would be swallowed up by the (admittedly spectacular) scenery.
Review — King Kong — BN+ — Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — Jack Thorne — Marius de Vries — Eddie Perfect — Drew McOnie — Sonny Tilders — Peter England — American Idiot — Steven Hoggett — Christiani Pitts — Ann Darrow — Eric William Morris — Once — Beetlejuice — Jessica Lange — La La Land — Jon Hoche — Erik Lochtefeld — Florenz Ziegfeld
