Answering The Call

It isn't just the size of the beast that is supposed to impress viewers when new musical King Kong opens in Melbourne this month. While the Global Creatures robotic animal is by all accounts pretty incredible, the musical score, written and curated by British producer and composer Marius de Vries, has some shock value all of its own.

For a start there are the names attached to the score; Robert Del Naja from Massive Attack, Sarah McLachlan, French dance duo Justice, Guy Garvey from Elbow and The Avalanches.

Considering the roll call of famous musos de Vries has spent studio time with, surely it was just a matter of going through his little black book.

"These are people I have existing relationships with. That helped build a certain level of trust in a situation that could otherwise have been alarming. I ended up doing the translation,” de Vries says of his job slotting his famous guests' work into a musical theatre context.

“It's a generous gesture and it must breed a little bit of insecurity to hand over one of your pieces of music into someone else's hands to put into a show where you don't really know the context. I'm very grateful.

"You're used to these people writing in the context of an album, the story telling instinct isn't quite as far to the front of the mind. It's been wonderful actually seeing how they respond to the challenge without bending what they do too far."

Though everything about the musical has been kept strictly under wraps to make sure audiences are suitably spellbound when they first catch a glimpse of the mechanical beast, there's been a little bit of music filtering through to the internet.

The thrilling glimpses promise a very modern electronic score that links to the past through songs such as The Avalanches rework of the old Arlen and Kohler classic Get Happy.

"Some of them have been comprehensively scrambled and others have been made more widescreen. Sometimes we've kept a contemporary sonic language but kept the original orchestrations the same and sometimes we've really bent the songs to fit in.

“I think when one of your first gestures is created by an act like The Avalanches you know you're going to get stylistic collisions. They were among our first collaborators and they very much encouraged that."

De Vries has flown into Melbourne for the last couple of weeks of rehearsals. Though the score doesn't really change much in the last couple of weeks there is still a need to put the music through its paces once rehearsals transfer to the theatre.

“It's too late for any huge changes but having said which you never really know what you've got until you get it up and running on the stage. We've been in workshop situations and dress rehearsal situations but it's only when you see it in the theatre when all the different creative departments come together that you really get a sense of how everything works.

“You do learn stuff and you have to allow a certain flexibility for what you learn. Some pieces get shorter or longer or faster or slower. There are still some tricks like that that you can do. But you try and contain that so it's all about polish now.”

While de Vries' production resume contains names as wildly varied and acclaimed as Massive Attack and Rufus Wainwright to Delta Goodrem and David Gray, de Vries has also worked with Aussie film-maker Baz Luhrmann on the music for Moulin Rouge and Romeo+Juliet, projects that also recontextualised music already familiar to audiences.

“The experience of doing Romeo+Juliet and Moulin Rouge with Baz was very influential,“ de Vries says.

“He's got a wonderful musical imagination and fearlessness when it comes to things. I think we learned a lot from each other. It was thanks to him that I had the opportunity to get up to that sort of behaviour on the screen, as much as it is to Global Creatures that I'm getting the opportunity to do it on the stage. I'm always grateful.”

WHAT: King Kong: The Music Theatre Event
WHEN & WHERE: Tuesday 28 May to Friday 7 June, Regent Theatre, Melbourne VIC