From ‘King Kong’ To ‘Harry Potter’ — Writer Jack Thorne Brings The Magic To Broadway (EXCLUSIVE)

The Kong and Ann Darrow connection

One of the questions raised by the show is regarding the connection made between Kong and Ann. In the original, it’s pretty clear that he is drawn to her because she’s blonde and white, and therefore unlike anyone else on Skull Island (the natives being black). This Ann is a woman of color.

“There are a lot of different iterations as to why he takes her,” Jack muses, “but I think in every single version of this story, there’s been a degree to which Ann has been in trouble when he took her. Then he is surprised by her. We have tried to explore who Ann Darrow is a little bit more. I’ve always felt that every time they’ve told this story, Ann has been at the behest of someone else. She’s still there because of Carl Denham, but the key decisions that happen in the story are now Ann’s and not Carl’s. It’s that moment when Kong is trapped — she is responsible for that. The moment when Kong breaks free, she is responsible for that. And when it comes to Kong’s death, she is one of many people culpable for what happens to him, and I think her culpability is very important. That, more than anything else, is what I wanted to do with the story.”

In the 2005 version of King Kong, Andy Serkis, using motion capture technology, was able to create a Kong that Naomi Watts’ Ann Darrow could truly communicate with. Given that the stage version is an animatronic device manipulated by cables and a number of people on stage, one of the challenges was turning Kong into an actual character.

“It was a challenge but also one of the reasons I wanted to do it,” Jack smiles. “We did have the advantage that we always had a voice of Kong — Jon Hoche — in the rehearsal room. But the first time I ‘met’ Kong was when the whole show was put together. I’d not met him in advance at all, and my big thing was, can you make an audience feel for this beast? Can you make an audience care for him? They’re going to see how it’s put together; they’re going to see how he’s operated. With all of that, can they still care about him as a being? And if they can, then we somehow started to answer the question of the story.

“The objectification of Kong is actually the problem of Kong,” he continues. “This story tries to analyze that objectification. If our audience can feel like this is not just an object, that this is something we need to care about, then somehow we’ve answered the problem of that. On top of that, obviously he can’t sing or dance, but trying to make him communicate with Ann was one of the key questions for me. And they do develop a sign language between the two of them. A very, very simple sign language, but a sign language all the same, which is possible for gorillas to do. That, again, was key to me.”

Empathy for Kong

What’s most effective about Kong in this production is the fact that there is a moment where the great ape moves to the edge of the stage, looks left, then right, and back again, and lets out a roar. In that instant, you forget the cables, you forget the guys manipulating his limbs and you’re simply swept up in the magic of the theater. Says Jack, “I hope it’s clear that his rage comes from the fact he’s looking for Ann in that moment. That when he’s looking out to us, he’s looking for her. I want people to feel the emotion of that to some degree as well as being awed by the shift.

“At this moment, in the place we are as people, it seems to be a challenge for us to be able to empathize with other humans and other things,” he adds, “and I do think the basic question this show asks is about our empathy and what we want to be, and what we want our relationship with our own success and the pain that costs others to be. I’ve always thought that the Kong story is a great one about exploitation and the journey that Ann goes on is one of realization that she is not prepared to pay the cost of exploiting another being in order to gain her success. It’s a play that frames itself around our own ambition and what it costs to get the success or the comfort that we feel like we innately deserve.”

Changes in Ann Darrow and Carl Denham

Throughout the show, the audience sees Ann Darrow in a sense discovering her strength and independence, while at the same time Carl Denham descends into a certain darkness as a person, blinded by his own ambition.

“She sees beyond herself,” Jack concurs, “and that’s one of the extraordinary things about Ann, which you see right from the beginning. Even when she’s got nothing, she’s generous. In that soup line in New York when she gives her soup to the parent of the child, saying, ‘You need this more than I do.’ She always has that inside her and the story is about that being allowed to flower out. And realizing that she doesn’t have to obey society’s rules in order to rise to the top. You know that she can find another way that doesn’t include Kong, and that she will. When we leave her at the end of the play, she is going to go on and do something extraordinary with her life, because of the experience she’s had.

“And with Carl, he gets everything he wants, though a song added to the show during previews deals with the fact that his self-belief is actually not founded on much at all. He actually talks about the mediocre films he’s made. He talks about the way that he’s never really felt the success he thought he deserved to be, and then he has his moment with Kong, and he knows it’s his moment, but it’s a moment built on sand. It’s not a moment that has any substance whatsoever, because it’s all built on exploiting something else; a creature he should never have stolen. That he and Ann should never have stolen from its natural habitat. Ann realizes that, but Carl can’t. At the end of the play, we leave him incredibly angry.”

The Challenges of Harry Potter

“Absolutely terrifying.”

Those are the words that Jack uses to describe the idea of attempting to follow up the epic Harry Potter book and film series with The Cursed Child. “But we had two very big advantages,” he says. “One is John Tiffany and I had already made two plays before, so I knew him intimately and he knew me intimately and we could have a very honest relationship throughout the whole process. I think that honesty is so important. And then the other key advantage we had is J.K. Rowling, who happens to be one of the nicest individuals that ever walked the Earth. She was incredibly supportive and brilliant all the way through the process. She was a joy.”

As to the power of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — which currently has productions in New York, London, and Australia and focuses largely on the children of the original who are now attending Hogwarts — he notes, “It’s about the pain of history and how we deal with it. Harry has not overcome his childhood and it takes his child, who is unable to cope with being the son of Harry Potter, to overcome it. By the end of the play, he has got a completely different relationship with history.

“There are so many things we need to let go of in our past and Harry, who was an incredibly brave boy from the first moment we meet him, has to be brave in an entirely new way in this play. That was always the story we wanted to tell. What did that childhood do to the man that was made? And to the other people around him? To Hermione and Ron and Draco, and the rest? By looking at that, reexamining that, and having the time to reexamine that, we were able to tell a story about who Harry is and who he is going to become. Again, by the end of the play, I hope that the journey is one where we leave a character who’s optimistic for the future and who he can be.”

The enduring power of Harry Potter

Through seven novels, eight films, and, now, a two-part play, the public’s fascination with Harry Potter seems to be unwavering. The real question, of course, is why?

“It’s a beautiful story,” Jack offers matter of factly. “One of the things I like about Harry is he’s not extraordinary and he’s a wizard, but he’s not an extraordinary wizard. He’s not amazing at spells. He’s very good on the broomstick, but he’s not particularly academic. The secret to why he achieves and survives and ultimately wins is his trust in the people around him and his ability to love despite everything that’s thrown at him. And his own innate bravery. I love both those things about Harry, and I think the world loves both those things about Harry. That, I think, is what the books celebrate and what we try to celebrate in the play.”

King Kong is currently roaring to life at the Broadway Theatre, while Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is working its own brand of magic at the Lyric Theatre.