This is a review of the out-of-town “try-out” of an upcoming Broadway Show. Make no bones about it – this show is coming to Broadway. There’s not a chance in hell that Mel Brooks and his producer buddies will “pull the plug” on this $15 Million dollar investment!
But nobody ever said that putting
on any Broadway show was easy. But putting on a brand new $15 Million dollar show that all the critics expect to be “perfect” and all the audiences expect to be “the best they’ve ever seen” is a feat that can only be undertaken with advance planning, rehearsal, skill, and sheer chutzpah. And if anyone can tackle that task – it’s the 81 year old Brooks.
Even though Mel Brooks co- wrote the screenplay – there is still a lot of effort required to translate that work from screen to stage while
adding appropriate music. Putting on a flawless Broadway show that will “knock your socks off” is like proof-reading an important paper you wrote - over and over again. You check, recheck, edit and re-edit the story. A Broadway show is no different. With a mere 30 performances to understand audience reactions to the jokes, remove one here, add a zinger there, hold for the laughs here, or cut a number there – it really does require a bit
of juggling. The actors are often given new lines. Songs changed. Lighting queues adjusted. Scenic movements adjusted. Lines changed again
… and again! Doing all this out of the glare of the Broadway spotlight is critical. Big budget shows of today also have lots of technology – computer controlled sets, lights, sound and more. They don’t perfect themselves overnight. The actors and the technology have to meld. The folks who run the technology have to plug it in, try it out, change the dials, and adjust the volume. All this is necessary so that everyone feels it’s ready for “prime time” on the great white way. After all – once you are there and charging $250 a ticket, it better be perfect!
When all that rehearsing is complete (they don’t sell the show in Seattle as a
“rehearsal”, but that’s what it really is) the show literally
packs up everything into 18 wheele
rs and moves across the country to New York. Then they have to unpack everything and set it up all over again - - thus the need for “previews” in New York. Shows can be changed while on the “tryout” and still more in previews. Once previews are over, it’s pencils down. A joke that got a belly laugh in Seattle might get nothing more than a snicker from a more sophisticated New York audience. Sometimes it works the other way around - things people never laughed at out of town stop the show in New York (a joke by the Yiddish shoe shine man at the Transylvania Heights railroad station seemed to elicit nothing more than a few chuckles fro
m the Seattle audience – but I’m sure that once the New York audience hears it applause and laughter will fill the theater).
Sometimes you just can’t be sure what changes when the show moves to Broadway. One thing, however, is for sure – this show is has all the ingredients to be a smash hit - from the writing to the direction and choreography (ala Susan Stroman) to the technical staging (scenery design, sound design, lighting design and special effects). Fifteen million dollars goes a long way to buy that – but it doesn’t go all the way. The talent on stage is what takes it across the finish line.
The Cast: The cast of Young Frankenstein is a remarkably talented group
- Roger Bart as the
zany Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (Gene Wilder in the movie); Megan Mullally as his socialite fiancé, Elizabeth (Madeline Kahn’s role in the movie); Andrea Martin as the dubious Frau Blucher *insert sound effect* (Cloris Leachman’s role in the movie); Christopher Fitzgerald as the dutiful humpbacked Igor (Marty Feldman in the movie) and Sutton Foster as Inga, Dr. Frankenstein’s bodacious assistant (Teri Garr’s role in the movie); and Shuler Hensley as the monster (Peter Boyle’s movie role).
The show: Run Time - 2 minutes shy of 3 hours mostly due to the fact that Mr. Brooks and Ms Stroman stick to the entire plot of the movie – cutting nothing just yet, but I would image a few things will be trimmed here and there and we’ll get it down to 2:45 or 2:40 by the time it gets to NYC.
The Story: Well – what would you expect? It’s just like the movie – silly, chock full of Shtick, and hysterically predictable. The jokes and one-liners roll on and on and would you really expect anything less from Brooks?
The Music: The Orchestration is appropriately grand with a full overture, Ent’re Act and Finale. It’s schmaltzy, upbeat and a true Broadway composition. Kudos to Doug Besterman. There are plenty of chorus number
and knock ‘em dead, show tapping show tunes. Honestly, mostly all un-memorable once you leave the theater, but all fun and silly toe-tapping schmaltz non-the-less. Even the ballads are comical – most notably Frau Blucher’s rendition in the laboratory of “He was Vas my Boyfriend”. I think that Irving Berlin might possibly turn over in his grave (laughing, of course) when he hears what they did to “Puttin’ on the Ritz”.
If I had
one production note to give Mr. Brooks and Ms.
Stroman- -improve the sound. (the sound, not the sound effects, which were remarkable.) I know the Seattle Paramount Theater is huge – radio city huge – but you can’t let the poor chorus go un-comprehended. At times I felt like the show was on stage next door and we were piping in the sound onto our stage. I truly hope this is just a function of the venue and is not the intended result at the Hilton Theater.
I’m sure there will be fans of the movie who will say “it pales in comparison”. I’m sure there will be folks who “hate it” because it’s just a movie remade and the jokes are stale. Yet others will flock to it just because it has Megan Mullally in it! Some will just go because it’s a Mel Brooks blockbuster on Broadway. And after the hit, The Producers, it’s a safe bet they’ll flock. Whatever your reason for attending - I am going out on a limb to say that this one might just be silly enough, packed with enough talent and technically dazzling enough to be worth the utterly criminal price of $250 - $400 per ticket they have the gall to charge in New York for it (but that’s the subject of a whole other blog).
Young Frankenstein - Coming alive to the Hilton Theater this October!
Anyone who knows anything about Nothing On (the play within the play) knows it is a physical comedy inside the physical comedy Noises Off - Three progressively "worse" acts repeated with disastrously funny consequences. Timing is more than half the battle and tuning the characters just right is the rest. I'd say they did a great job at the first part - the timing and physicality was nifty. The set (Derek McLane) was quite literally exactly what I remembered it to be - as if they pulled it out of storage. What the production lacked, I thought, was a sense of mad-cap pace and hilarity. It was almost very deliberate and plodding. Certainly Ms. Martin had moments of glory - mostly in Act I as she labored over the sardines and later when she got tangled in the phone cord. I remember TR Knight having a bigger part than Mr. McClure - and I don't know why. Ms. Hilty delivered those stilted and quite literally memorized lines perfectly - and by perfectly I mean at just about the most incorrect time and always mugging to the audience like her character is supposed to. This time around Mr. Scott walked around the entire theater including the mezzanine with his booming director's voice and I don't remember Mr. Gallagher doing the same except for right down front. There were plenty of stars in this production although none of them shone overly brightly. There was plenty of talent and great timing in this production, but nothing transported me. That could be a bit of the 2nd time around syndrome, or it just might possibly be that the production seemed a bit more farcical and deliberately physical than it needed to be. 
