by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan
Directed and Choreographed by Susan Stroman
A Mirvish Production at the Princess of Wales Theatre
March 18-April 18, 2010

   Mel Brooks offers the careless rapture of an inspired amateur, and to state this is not to denigrate his uproarious talent. But it is to draw a distinction between true wit and the broader rungs of vaudevillian or burlesque comedy. His black and white film of Young Frankenstein (1974), that starred Gene Wilder in the title role and Peter Boyle as the Monster, was daring comedy, a mile wide, and it appealed even to those who don’t necessarily like Mel Brooks. As he did with The Producers, Brooks took his original film creation and puffed it up into a musical, but whereas The Producers became a laugh-riot of enviable dimensions, the musical version of Young Frankenstein is less estimable. Not that it lacks jokes or gags: it can’t help itself in finding laughter anywhere, usually below the belt, even when making a rhapsody on the brain: “Though your genitalia has been known to fail ya/You can bet your ass on the brain.” The line is zany, especially in the context of an anatomy lesson by young Dr. Frankenstein (“that’s Frankensteen”) and because it is given the full-blown Broadway musical treatment. What’s even better is the virtuosity of the lyric for it is given the high-speed patter of a tongue-twisting Danny Kaye. But Brooks just won’t leave well enough alone. He goes for the phallus every time he can, indulging in a feast of bad puns, and his audience thinks him cunning in this linguistic play.

   Young Frankenstein follows the movie in broad outline. A scion of the original Frankenstein revisits the family castle (Transylvania Heights) in Transylvania and revives the monster created by the ancestor. Guffaw-generating comic characters from the film version survive in the musical: the fright-wigged, frightfully faced housekeeper Frau Blucher, whose very name causes horses to whinny in fear; the hump-backed Igor, whose hump keeps moving from one side of his back to the other; Frankenstein’s madcap fiancée Elizabeth; the hilarious blind hermit; Inspector Kemp with the prosthetic arm; and, of course, the Monster who channels Boris Karloff even when “Puttin on the Ritz.” And there are memorable sequences: Frankenstein’s anatomy lesson; Elizabeth’s “Please Don’t Touch Me,” a song that is the ultimate shiksa’s ultimate gentile anthem to a WASP diva’s stalling foreplay; Frau Blucher’s torch song that channels Liza Minnelli (“if I mentioned wedlock/he’d put me in a headlock”); the marvelous pastiche “Transylvania Mania” dance; the whole blind hermit scene; and, best of all, the cloak, top hat, and cane tap number to “Puttin’ On The Ritz.”

   So, if you can forgive the bad puns on knockers and balls, the adolescent humour of other moments, and the insistent urge to magnify every joke beyond its maximum elasticity, this is a guilty pleasure trip: rife with bright, energetic, wild smut, generous lashings of belly-shaking laughter, and liberated exuberance. It helps that the cast is American because they all know how to sell their talent and the musical. No Canadian reticence here, no modesty when it is least required. And it helps that the headliners come to us from Broadway. Okay, so there’s no Gene Wilder or Madeline Kahn here, but Roger Bart needs no introduction to those who saw him as the excessively sibilant and camp Carmen Ghia in The Producers, and Brad Oscar, who plays Inspector Kemp, also needs no introduction for he starred as the pigeon-breeding Nazi playwright in the same musical. Shuler Hensley turns the Monster into a hilarious green giant, and Beth Curry is very funny as Elizabeth, especially in her erotic encounter with the Monster. Cory English makes an endearing grotesque of Igor, and Joanna Glushak turns Frau Blucher into a Teutonic Mrs. Danvers at times, almost making one forget Cloris Leachman from the film. Almost needless to say, the technical elements of the production are Broadway quality. But to take a higher tone on things, isn’t it time Mel Brooks turned out something that doesn’t look as if it is an attempt at cloning an earlier success?   

photos: Paul Kolnik

pic 1 (L-R): Beth Curry (Elizabeth), Roger Bart (Frankenstein), Cory English (Igor), Joanna Glushak (Frau Blucher) and Shuler Hensley as the Monster

pic 2: Shuler Hensley (the Monster) and Roger Bart (Dr. Frankenstein) in "Puttin' On The Ritz"



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