I'm very excited! It’s just been announced that Mel Brooks’ YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN - described today as “the new comedy musical based on the Oscar-nominated smash hit movie” - will open in the West End on Thursday 28 September at the Garrick Theatre.
Odd that they’re calling it new, swept along by the success of Brook’s previous international hit musical THE PRODUCERS, YOUNG FRANKENSTIEN was first conceived to play in a massive Broadway Theatre with eye watering, record breakingly high ticket prices. It opened to significant advance bookings but in the face of some hostility about the cost of a ticket.
The press release summarises the plot as follows -
“the wickedly inspired re-imagining of the Mary Shelley classic, see’s Frederick Frankenstein, an esteemed New York brain surgeon and professor, inherit a castle and laboratory in Transylvania from his deranged genius grandfather, Victor Von Frankenstein. He now faces a dilemma - does he continue to run from his family’s tortured past or does he stay in Transylvania to carry on his grandfather’s mad experiments reanimating the dead and, in the process, fall in love with his sexy lab assistant Inga?”
Somehow I managed to wangle my way into the dress rehearsal and I loved it! There was all the manic, twisted energy of THE PRODUCERS but on a huge scale. It seemed to be a sure fire hit. I was particularly excited to see Megan Mullally in it (Karen from TVs Will and Grace) who was hilarious.
Unfortunately it opened to “whatever” reviews and the next time I was in NYC it had shed some of it’s expensive stars and it was easy to pick up a cheap ticket at the half price TKTS booth on times square.
I don’t know, maybe it was the scale of the original production which left people cold and indifferent in the vast auditorium. I'm very hopeful that in London’s smaller Garrick Theatre it will find the humanity it lacked on Broadway.
The same creative team are reunited and hopefully they’ll make tweaks to the piece based on what they learnt did and didn’t work on Broadway. Mel Brooks adapted his 1974 film with co-book writer, Thomas Meehan and the staging will once again be by the acclaimed director and choreographer Susan Stroman.
Michael Harrison is one of the British co-producers so the new version for London will get a try our run at his base, the Theatre Royal, in Newcastle.
By the time we get to see it the Broadway diamond in the rough should emerge as the polished gem everyone’s always willed it to be.
Casting to be announced.
Some of the most beloved characters of children’s literature are heading to the London Palladium when a new version of THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS opens there in June, featuring Edwardian river and woodland creatures Ratty, Mole and Badger and of course there high spirited friend, Toad.