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Cracked Barricade. Opening Feb. 2, 1959 in the Great Hall at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand (the only place in the city where an opera-sized production could be staged before a mixed audience). King Kong was an instant hit, and played before 120,000 persons—two-thirds of them white—in Johannesburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth, and Cape Town. Then, as now in London, heavyweight Jazz Singer Nathan M'dledle (pronounced Muh-dead-ly) played "the King." His girl was played by Miriam Makeba, whose success in the role catapulted her to solo spots in U.S. nightclubs; she has been replaced in the opera by 29-year-old Peggy Phango. From the beginning, the semipro chorus has been filled with carpenters, shop clerks, schoolteachers, messengers, housemaids, typists, even an X-ray technician.
Surprisingly, the government granted passports for King Kong's trip to London (it may come to New York as well) and, slightly cracking the apartheid barricade, the mayor of Johannesburg gave a farewell party for the cast. In London, moving out tentatively from their modest hotel near Notting Hill, cast members were welcomed by everyone from underground conductors to Princess Margaret, and few in the show's enthusiastic audiences could resist the African rhythms:
King Kong bigger than Cape Town
King Kong harder than gold
King Kong knock any ape down—
That's me, I'm him. King Kong.