King Kong Becomes an Aussie Musical

Steve Barton   |  

Oct 8, 2012

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We have seen many iterations of King Kong over the years, and each has been met with varying degrees of success. Just when you think that there couldn’t be anything more absurd than the pendulous breasts on the female gorilla in King Kong Lives, the flick is now getting the musical treatment!

According to Variety the Aussie tuner incarnation of King Kong has tapped Marius de Vries, the composer and arranger for films including Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet, to oversee the score.

De Vries will pull together a score combining 1930s standards, including I Wanna Be Loved by You and Get Happy, with new and pre-existing tunes by music acts including Sarah McLachlan, Justice, the Avalanches, Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja and Elbow’s Guy Garvey. Stephen Pavlovic from Oz music label/promoter Modular People as well as scribe Michael Mitnick, book writer of the upcoming Animal House musical, will write some of the lyrics.

Producers of the brewing musical, aiming for a Down Under world premiere in June, have set early casting details, with Esther Hannaford cast in the Fay Wray part alongside thesps including Adam Lyon, Chris Ryan, Richard Piper and Queenie van de Zandt.

Aussie animatronic specialists Global Creatures, a producer of branded stadium tours including Walking With Dinosaurs and How to Train Your Dragon, produce King Kong. The show kicks off in Melbourne’s Regent Theater on June 15th. No future stagings have yet been mapped out, although an international life for the production seems likely to follow.

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