The musical’s title character, a 20-foot, 2000-pound gorilla, springs to life thanks to a team of more than a dozen seamlessly integrated artists and technicians who operate onstage and behind the scenes. He is voiced live by an offstage performer.

King Kong began life as the title character of a 1933 film from RKO Pictures. A novelization of the screenplay came out in late 1932, a few months before the film was released. Since then, Kong has appeared in dozens of films, TV shows, comic books, graphic novels, books, and more—but this his first appearance as the star of a Broadway musical.

Prior to Broadway, an earlier production of the musical took place in Australia in 2013 in a substantially different form with a different creative team.