"Young Frankenstein" the Broadway musical from 1974 film opened at Golden Gate: Super Duper

Young Frankenstein/Roger Bart/Shuler Hensley/Photo: Paul Kolnik

Mel Brooks’ super duper Broadway musical Young Frankenstein based on the 1974 classic came to life Wednesday night at the Golden Gate Theater, beginning an electrifying month of zany comedy with the characters doing a song and dance around the original gags. Pictured above, Tony award winners Shuler Hensley (monster) and Roger Bart (Frederick Frankenstein, right).

For a slideshow click here: Young Fronkonstein

and New monster musical comes to SF

Here's a video clip of the actual musical: Musical. Shows on Friday, July 9 and Friday, July 16 will have a question & answer session with the cast.

Back to the playground

The thing about art is that it’s so subjective that the intangibles, like a treatment simply making you feel good and like a teenager again, makes it effective art. So what if it’s childlike or playground level humor, a little schoolyard underwear show. If you are my age you might remember the sixth graders hanging from the monkey bars over the tanbark and laughing about putting on an underwear show while hanging upside down. In my day girls still had to wear dresses to school. Ah, Dayton Elementary in San Leandro circa 1968. Oh, where was I? Yes, Young Fronkonsteen.

Brooksian humor and The Producers connection

While the Producers might have been the easy shot at turning into a Broadway musical for real, the biggest laugh of my teenage years had to come from Blazing Saddles. The poster adorned my wall in my dorm room at Berkeley. Steve Martin was still in his white suit back then, well excuse me. Born in Babylonia, condo made of stona. Oh, where was I? Mel Brooksdom. Young Fronkonsteen.

The audience at Wednesday night’s performance, a full house, sat primed and ready as the applause and laughter started with the opening screen of the Castle Frankenstein. A cute and campy projection of the ridge top road winding to the castle high above the village of Transylvania under a full moon in 1934.
Thomas Meehan who co-wrote the book of The Producers wrote Young Frankenstein.

Susan Stroman directed and choreographed, as she did for the Producers which won twelve Tony Awards.
Robin Wagner who designed the sets for The Producers created Frankenstein sets which change with each song just as the costumes would, creating a fast pace befitting the zany antics. William Ivey Long created the costumes, from buxom goofy villagers to laboratory coats to socialite gowns to Igor’s migrating hump. Speaking of things bumpy, you get lots of cleavage and long legs (okay I’ll say it, T & A); and blond waves; thunder and lightening (Frau Blucher!) and fog and even rain.

Thank Peter Kaczorowski for the campy lighting, Jonathan Deans for the sound design. The distinguished Jonathan has worked on many Cirque du Soleil shows.

Tara Rubin Casting.

So, together they make Frankenstein young again. It’s all here in the musical, each beloved line evolving into a song or even a sequence. The opening scenes let loose Elizabeth, played by Beth Curry with a 1950s sexpot/Lucille Ball/Joan Crawford untouchability worked into a frenzy with the liberation of a Catholic school girl. I guess the joke here is that Brooks is Jewish so who gets the last laugh?

Roger Bart brings his Tony award winning performance as Frederick Frankenstein and a voice eerily similar to Gene Wilder when speaking. Roger seems not only randier but more impish and high strung. Sometimes the characters seem to channel Kramer from Seinfeld too, speaking in staccato when their emotions escalate. What’s not to like.

English plays Igor to the hilt, even donning the cheery yellow raincoat when he goes to fetch the brain to be placed in the monster’s skull. There’s a cute tongue in cheek song leading up to this, about the supremacy of the brain.

Genetalia may fail ya’ but there’s nothing like the brain.

Sorry. (Not really.) Where was I? Oh yes.

What knockers

Dr. Frankenstein gets a spectacular vintage film style laboratory with huge accoutrements and not a thing micro or digital—enormous gears rise to the ceiling as if in a cartoon. Even the front door of the castle has enormous knockers as one would expect. Anne Horak, who plays Inga, is a very good sport and has no wardrobe malfunctions even during her extended roll in the hay. Speaking of the family business, the song of this title comes with an enormous puppet of the monster that must stand 25 feet high and takes five or six on stage to operate.

He Vas My Boyfriend

Some classic lines get an update too, such as when Frau Blucher fondly remembers intimate bedtime moments with her own Dr. F the grandfather and keeps offering Dr. F the heir a bedtime libation, from warm milk to ovaltine to her running out for a soy mochachino. She gets her limelight with a cabaret routine on a chair as she performs He Vas My Boyfriend. She also plays host when the monster she seeks to free puts on the ritz at the Loew’s Theater with Dr. Frankenstein.

Shuler Hensley as the monster does shine in Puttin on the Ritz. He sounds just like the original in the film, looks genuinely modest in the cave man scene where Elizabeth hits her high notes and discovers the sweet mystery of life with her zipperneck, and manages to sound as suave as Cary Grant after the transfer with his maker. That Ritz sequence has been worked into a big song and dance number with the entire cast and chorus, including ingenious and old fashioned imagery such as the monster’s solo projecting an enormous shadow behind him only to have it demonstrate a mind of it’s own.

A chorus of dancers in monster outfits genuflect in black six inch platform monster tap boots. There’s a stunning stop motion sequence where the dancers leap and seem frozen in air together by strob lights. It’s an exhilarating number all the more fun because the Golden Gate audience has become part of the show, being the audience at the Loew’s theater and addressed as such by the performers.

Joanna Glushak pays homage to Cloris Leachman’s Frau Blucher and you get all the horse whinnies you could hope for at the mention of her name. The horses involve tall puppet necks and heads and lots of animated interaction with the hay wagon riders they pull to the castle. The Where Wolf line for Igor even brings a real werewolf into the midst, which you don’t get in the film.

Brad Oscar plays the blind hermit pretty close to the original except he has a great solo, Please Send Me Someone. He does something astonishing for his curtain call with the costume involving his double role as Inspector Kemp, who is also looking for someone.

In the pit

The orchestra had lots of fun songs including the villager numbers with lots of brass and keyboards, mostly young men and a couple of women. Robert Billig conducted. Assistant Conductor/keyboards: Steven Landau. Drums/percussion: Lee Appleman. Keyboards (there were two, one wood and one metal with a pedal so the musician could stand): Edgar William “Trey” Cox, III. Synthesizer programming: Randy Cohen.
Local orchestra: Woodwind I, Tim Devine. Woodwind 2: Steven Parker. Woodwind 3: Robert Todd.

I saw a bassoon, it stood five feet tall. I think this also means clarinets and I thought I saw a saxophone in the pit. Trumpet 1: Ron Blais. Trumpet 2: Chris Barnes. French Horn: Cameron Kapf. Trombone/Contractor: Kevin Porter.

Violin: Michelle Maruyama. This would be THE violin, pantomimed by Frau Blucher.
String Bass: Sascha Jacobsen. Percussion: Tommy Kesecker.

A few frustrations though minor: the smell of smoke on the clothes of smokers. Tall patrons too--my friend Holly and I are no taller than 5'4" and we sat behind two big men so the silhouette of their huge heads and shoulders made a big impression all night. It was no use trading seats with each other, although it would have been nice to trade with the tall people. Sound issues in the first act seemed to be unintelligibility of the lyrics either due to muffled sound, difficult enunciation or the speed of the zany songs or all of the above even though I sat at orchestra level. Everybody was well behaved, no cell phones going off or candy crackling or chewing. Just continuous joy and applause, I think the way happy children clap their hands. Very few children oddly enough and they were giddy little girls in dresses in the front row, climbing over the rail into the orchestra pit.

Tickets cost $30 to $99.

For more information: www.SHNSF.com

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