Performing the struggle against apartheid opposing apartheid on stage: King Kong the musical

Abstract

Tyler Fleming’s book provides an account of the first production of ‘King Kong’ — a musical theatre production based on the life of the boxer Ezekiel Dlamini — in 1959. This musical rankled the apartheid state partly because it affirmed the aspirations of a Black urban class against an official state narrative which preferred a Black rural population. As a story of Black urban life that crossed over for mainstream white audiences, and became part of the canon and lore of South African theatre and popular music, the play stands as a landmark in South African cultural history. Fleming’s well-researched study considers the ways in which the multiracial production confronted petty apartheid legislation. The author offers an abundance of empirical detail on the play’s production, its human and sociopolitical context, and furthers our understanding of African participation in cultural trends — in this case, musical theatre — by invoking Paul Gilroy’s ‘Black Atlantic’ to argue for a multiplicity of perspectives on cultural production. Yet Fleming’s narrative exegesis remains firmly within the discipline of social history, at the expense of accounting for broader theoretical implications of the work.