‘King Kong’ musical to open in Australia with 20-foot-tall star

Some people think “Spider Man: Turn Off the Dark” was the worst disaster ever to hit a New York City stage, but the problem-plagued musical’s balky machinery, injured flying actors and bruised egos in 2011 were nothing compared to what happened when King Kong made his Big Apple debut.

The ritzy vaudeville house where the oversized gorilla’s captors tried to show him off wound up worse for the wear in the 1933 film “King Kong,” as did a considerable swath of the surrounding Manhattan city-scape.

Starting Tuesday, the mayhem is scheduled to go live at the Regent Theatre in Melbourne, Australia, with the first preview performance of “King Kong,” the musical. The official opening is June 15, and if all goes well, chances are the big guy will get to return someday to his old stomping grounds.

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The producers, Global Creatures, know their beasts. They’re the same Aussies who staged “Walking With Dinosaurs — The Arena Attraction,” which toured the U.S. after doing big business in its home country, then followed it up by providing the critters for another touring arena show, Dreamworks’ “How to Train Your Dragon: The Live Spectacular.”

Sonny Tilders, who designed the 42-foot-tall mama T-Rex and the 3,000-pound dragons for those shows, has crafted a 20-foot-tall, 1-ton Kong for this one. A dozen puppeteers will animate the musical’s leading primate as he lives and dies for the love of a blond. Kong will have more than 40 other human performers keeping him company, and a 76-member crew to keep the show humming — they hope.

We can’t say for sure that the gorilla won’t sing, but the cast list on the show’s website lists no “voice of Kong.”

“We’re really conscious of the risk of this turning into another `Spider-Man,’ but we’re doing everything we can to make sure it won’t be,” “Kong” producer Carmen Pavlovic told the Melbourne newspaper the Age last fall. The production moved into the 2,000-plus seat Regency months in advance of Tuesday’s first curtain, to provide plenty of time to work out any bumps.

Tilders told the Age that the Regency is just an incubator. “Australia is just a blip. It’s an out-of-town trial…. I would love if we could end up with a flagship production of this in Germany, Japan, New York.”

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Note to Aussies: Cirque du Soleil’s planned 10-year reign at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood didn’t pan out, so maybe Kong could fill the void as L.A.’s resident theatrical tourist attraction — if he proves he can swing it on stage.

Anxiety over elaborate special effects isn’t the only parallel between the “Spider-Man” and “King Kong” productions. Until she got canned, the super-hero musical’s team was headed by an A-list American theater talent in director Julie Taymor, and its score is by rock stars — Paul “Bono” Hewson and Dave “The Edge” Evans of of U2.

The American stage eminence for “King Kong” is its book writer, playwright Craig Lucas (“Prelude to A Kiss” and “Light in the Piazza”). Some of its music is by pop stars, including Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan,Robert del Naja (stage name 3D) of the influential English dance-music band Massive Attack and the French electronica duo Justice. Coordinating the music is composer-arranger Marius de Vries, who was musical director for Baz Luhrmann’s films “Moulin Rouge” and “Romeo + Juliet.”

The director is Daniel Kramer, an American based in London whose credits include operas for the Bolshoi, Mariinsky and English National Opera, and British productions of “Angels in America,” “Woyzeck” and “Hair” (the “hairy guy” at the heart of the 1960s rock musical has nothing on Kong).

Lucas apparently hasn’t monkeyed too much with the story, keeping the three key human characters: Ann Darrow (Kong’s love interest played by Fay Wray in the original film, then by Jessica Lange and Naomi Watts in the 1976 and 2005 remakes), Jack Driscoll, who completes the romantic triangle, and Carl Denham, the fame-hungry impresario who brings Kong back alive from Skull Island and comes to regret it.

But there’s at least one new wrinkle: a narrator named Cassandra, after the ancient Trojan prophetess from Homer’s “Illiad,” whom nobody heeds. There might be a certain brashness in that: Taymor’s “Spider-Man” dipped into ancient Greek myth as well — an element that got disparaged while she was in command and reduced after she got dumped and the script was revised.

ALSO:

Theater review: ‘Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark’

Classic Hollywood: 80th birthday toast to `King Kong’

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