INTERVIEW: Eric William Morris on his journey to find ‘King Kong’
Photo: King Kong is currently playing the Broadway Theatre in New York City. Photo courtesy of Matthew Murphy / Provided by BBB with permission.
NEW YORK — The King Kong story has been told in many different forms and across many generations. In many ways, the iconic tale of a large ape and his trip to the Big Apple has become ingrained in pop culture. Who doesn’t know about Kong’s ascent to the top of a skyscraper with Ann Darrow in tow? Who doesn’t know about filmmaker Carl Denham’s misguided attempts to direct a motion picture on Skull Island?
Banking on this cultural memory is the new King Kong musical at the Broadway Theatre in Midtown Manhattan. The much-anticipated show comes from Australia and features an enormous puppet that stands 20 feet tall and weighs 2,000 pounds. It’s a marvel to behold on the expansive stage of the Broadway Theatre.
Christiani Pitts plays the Darrow character, a young woman trying to break into show business. She attracts the eye of Denham (played by Eric William Morris), a fast-talking director who charts a course to Skull Island to film a real monster mystery. Erik Lochtefeld plays Lumpy, and a cast of 35 back up these principal actors.
Morris returns to Broadway after first debuting in Coram Boy and also playing the character of Sky in Mamma Mia! He went through the typical audition routine, but the big man — King Kong himself — did not enter the picture until much later in the development process.
“I’m going to say about a year and a half ago, an audition came through for it,” Morris said in a recent phone interview. “I was not in town to do it, and they didn’t have a script available. So I was like, you know what, I’ll pass. We’ll see if it comes back around when I come back in town. Came in town, they sent the script, and it was a little over a year ago, I guess last October. I loved the script, and I went in. And I auditioned and met the creative team. That was just simply for a three-week workshop.”
That workshop was for the creative team — which includes writer Jack Thorne, composer Marius de Vries and director/choreographer Drew McOnie — to test out the human element of the show before Kong took the stage.
“We did the whole play with the music but without any costumes or puppetry or any of the staging,” Morris said. “So we kind of put the whole show together minus our title character in just the rehearsal room, and I really loved that. And then after that, I got along really well with everybody, and they asked me to go along for the ride.”
What a ride it has been. Each night King Kong impresses hundreds of audience members with images and sounds that have never been experienced on Broadway before. When the puppet is first seen, there’s a noticeable gasp amongst the public, which exactly mimics the reaction of the public in the original story.
“I had seen the original film, and I had also seen the Peter Jackson one where Jack Black played the role [of Denham],” Morris said. “But the role of Carl Denham in this iteration was really attractive because they simplified the story. They simplified the character. There’s usually another male character named Jack Driscoll, who ends up falling in love with Ann and ends up saving her and going on that journey. That’s not in our show, and so Carl takes on a lot of the responsibilities of being this ambitious dreamer type who gets Ann to go along on his crazy adventures. I found that very attractive about this role. I think my awareness of King Kong was about the level where I feel like everybody’s awareness is. Everybody knows the basics of the story, and that’s about where I started with it.”
After he landed the role, Morris entered the rehearsal room for two months, which is a bit longer than most Broadway musicals. The first month of rehearsals saw the puppeteers handling the monster, designed by Sonny Tilders, in the actual Broadway Theatre. The rest of the cast went through staging in a smaller rehearsal studio.
“So everybody who had to handle the puppetry and do all of that work, they were already in the theater where the puppet was already in there and ready to go,” Morris remembers. “And then the rest of us, the three principal characters were just in a little rehearsal studio in Midtown putting together the rest of the show and doing all the things that you do on any other play where you do character work and talk about and rehearse it and stage it and learn all the music. So for the first month, it was a completely different experience, where it felt like we were putting together a tiny little show with three people in it, and then for the second month we all got put together on stage. That’s when it felt like, OK, this is exactly what we’re doing with all 35 cast members in the same room together.”
Morris needs to have a close, collaborative relationship with the other principal actors in the show, especially Pitts’ Darrow character. He reported that the working relationship has been wonderful, and that chemistry is seen on the stage.
“Everybody’s very on board and enthusiastic to tell this story, and the three of us formed a really nice bond together,” he said. “You’re told there’s going to be this huge puppet. There’s going to be a lot of these special effects. This is going to happen. That’s going to happen, and you just have to go along with it until you see it. So the three of us have a really good relationship together. They’re both brilliant actors, really wonderful people, too.”
He added: “The other thing is then there’s 30 other people in the cast who are mostly from dance backgrounds that I don’t get that much of a chance to work with on any other project, but it feels like the most collaborative of collaborative arts. And musicals are like that anyway. It takes so many people to put together a new musical, but this one in particular it felt like I had met so many different kinds of artists: puppeteers and dancers and obviously directors, designers, music directors, musicians, just so many different people to put this thing together. So it’s been a really cool cultural experience to do.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
King Kong, starring Christiani Pitts, Eric William Morris and Erik Lochtefeld, is currently playing the Broadway Theatre in Midtown Manhattan. Click here for more information and tickets.
