With the exception of "Queen of New York", I didn't find the King Kong score to be particularly memorable and I wondered why they decided to make it a musical instead of a straight play.
I thought the projections were brilliant and the scene in which the boat approaches Skull Island was particularly well done. I also thought the initial reveal of Kong was very well executed, but the experience went downhill from that point.
The staging of the reveal is relatively dark and the audience slowly begins to "perceive" Kong, as opposed to having him suddenly appear onstage, and this approach is suspenseful and thrilling. Unfortunately, the puppet subsequently appears in far too many scenes, some of which have him doing little more than sitting there for extended periods. Worst of all, after the initial reveal, the lighting designer often illuminates the puppet with numerous, high-wattage fixtures and makes absolutely no attempt to disguise, or even mitigate, the extensive rigging that gives him life. By the end of the first act, I was completely desensitized to Kong and no longer found him impressive. This was a case of "too much of a good thing", and I thought the show would've been much more successful if they had cut the puppet's stage time - and its lighting - in half.
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"Michael Riedel...The Perez Hilton of the New York Theatre scene"
- Craig Hepworth, What's On Stage
