King Kong, King Kong, he's very, very big and he's very, very strong

I saw King Kong on Thursday, as an end of semester treat (yes, I've now finished my final semester at Melbourne), and, since some of my friends have expressed an interest in seeing it, I will put down my thoughts that they might be better advised as to whether or not to part with their hard earned money.

I will say it upfront that the music and acting are terrible: of all the songs, I remember only two, and even then only because they were established songs I already knew and I was wondering if they were public domain or not. One, possibly more, of the songs, were electro-dance tracks, and this is terrible because not only is the play set in the 1920s, when such songs did not exist, but also because that's one of the few attractive features of the 20s in my eyes. The title of this blogpost is a direct example of the deft lyrics you will encounter if you go and see this show. You can only imagine the other delights that await you.
Similarly, the characters are poorly drawn and not interesting in the slightest- I don't even remember their names, despite them being shoehorned into the dialogue every five minutes. They're boring and annoying and honestly just being in their company seems like a waste of one's life- I'm not surprised the lass falls for the ape, as he's by far the most intellectually stimulating of the people she meets; what I can't fathom is what Kong sees in her.
And this brings me to the turning point of this review: the ape is AMAZING.

Just amazing.
For one thing, it's huge- I was way in the back (cheap seats, y'know) and I really got the feeling that there was a forty foot gorilla in front of me. I just couldn't comprehend how they could manoeuvre something like that about the stage- it was at least four times the height of anyone on stage. It was mind-blowing.
And for another, the facial expressions this thing pulls are phenomenal- you really see the emotion in every single thing he does, more so than in anyone else on stage, but that's not saying much. At one point, the puppet made eye contact with me, and I started welling up. I actually started to tear up. It was fantastic.
The staging on the whole is very...exciting. Overly so at times. They really capture the feeling of a ship at one point, but at another they completely fail to capture the feeling of a city, opting instead for a coked-up nightclub. At one point, our heroine is being unconvincingly chased by the police or mobsters or rapists or something (it's not made clear), and runs right into a vaudeville show. Why? How? Who knows? Who cares? It's a chance to have a completely gratuitous chorus of girls in panties! YAY! This experience is repeated when the same heroine has a dream sequence where of bunch of actresses or hookers or showgirls or drag queens (it's not made clear) tell her to get dolled up before her screen test, only for the director to tell her she doesn't need to change the way she looks for the public. Thank God they got the ticket-shilling lingerie models on display before he told her that, right? Phew.
All in all, I actually would recommend King Kong. The puppet is just that fucking good. Just arrive forty minutes late and avoid the tedious "human" ""interaction"" at the beginning.