Poor King Kong. First, taken prisoner. Now trapped in a bad musical

By Peter Marks for The Washington Post

Christiani Pitts as Ann Darrow in KING KONG. (Image/Credit: Matthew Murphy)

If you’re of a mind to pay 150 bucks or more to see the best Thanksgiving Day Parade float ever, have I got a show for you!

Be warned, though: there are strings attached. And not just to the 2,000-pound beast made of steel and carbon fiber operated by a slew of puppeteers, whose roar rattles the rafters of the Broadway Theatre. Because when you are not marveling at the impressive engineering that’s gone into the evening’s star performance, you’ll have to subject yourself to what feel like the equally animatronic contributions of the writers and director-choreographer of Broadway’s new musical “King Kong.”

This dreary, Australian-bred concoction, staged by Drew McOnie, is theme-park Broadway at its most transparent. It’s a perfect example of how investor-driven producing entities now try to build musicals they think audiences desire — rather than what artists want to create. It’s theater born on a spreadsheet. Like the recent unveilings of “Pretty Woman” on Broadway and “Beetlelejuice” in Washington, “King Kong, ”which had its official opening Thursday night, comes across as two acts of desperate cannibalizing of bygone inspiration. […]

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