/ 19 February 2015

Plans to revive King Kong fail

The 1959 South African musical
The 1959 South African musical

The embattled Market Theatre has been forced to bow out of an ambitious revival of the 1960s spectacle, King Kong: The Musical

One of the shows planned for the 2015 programme was the internationally acclaimed work.

“King Kong was a project the Market Theatre was interested in reviving but we were unable to secure adequate finances,” said senior publicist Lusanda Zokufa.

She had earlier cautioned that the theatre preferred not to go public on projects for which funding could not be sourced. Instead Zokufa chose to dispatch a schedule of programmes for this year.

These include Athol Fugard’s People Live There and a reworking of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Of particular interest is Lepatata, which means bull-horn in Setswana/Sepedi.

The theatre’s financial crisis is rippling throughout the sector. The funds are either not available or took time to be processed, leading to several ambitious projects having to be shelved or postponed.