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Week Of August 20, 2007 - Mon / 10 Year Wed / Fri
August 27, 2007
Musical Of The Living Dead
I was a little concerned as I scheduled a trip to Seattle to see the pre-Broadway preview of Young Frankenstein (it would only be a “try out” if they hadn’t already sold over $10 million worth of tickets to the show on Broadway) about whether it was appropriate to review a Broadway show before it hit Broadway. There has been no small amount of consternation in recent years as New York papers started sending their lead critics to production that were, indeed, trying out on the road. Even at near-Broadway prices, a show that is being worked on before it is ready for prime time would seem to deserve some space… even more so if people are being invited to see a movie for free in order for the studio to get their opinions.
But Mel Brooks & Co. made it much simpler for me by setting an "opening” date in Seattle for critics. The move was presumably made to give the show a few weeks on its feet before getting local criticism. This didn’t keep at least one NY paper and Variety from turning up to add their voices to the local ones. And now, my own.
So first, a review for people who haven’t seen the show, don’t want to know too much, and certainly don’t want any spoilers. (If you really want to keep a fresh eye, even for this show from a film, stop reading right now.) And after that, on Tuesday, a second piece with my detailed notes on the show… some suggestions about how I think the show can be improved.
The thrill and the horror of Young Frankenstein is that it, unlike The Producers, has the feel of the giant machine shows that have been hitting Broadway in recent years. For instance, the current Grease revival - generated not by the need for a revival, but as a guaranteed pre-sale based on a television contest that theoretically made intimate celebrities of the new Danny & Sandy. (I can’t wait for the all-Real World/Road Rules revival of Spring Awakening in a few years.) Or the insultingly bad, but terribly energetic turn of Legally Blonde from a teen girl cult movie into a teen girl cult Broadway show. Once we learned that Disney knew how to make a Broadway show as special as its family films, we can now expect hits when they make the transfer (even if Tarzan, their first non-musical movie turned musical theater show, flopped.)
Some of these shows, including the jukebox musicals, reach well beyond their roots. The Lion King does. So does Jersey Boys. And of course, The Producers. For me, Spamalot is the example of where the line is clearest. The show is at its best when it uses the Python movie as a starting point for its wonderful musical hall style humor, way off the narrative. The show is at its worst when pandering to the audience that is expecting to see “It’s just a flesh wound” or “Pink… no blue… agghhhhh!” Some moments just don’t transfer. And I am pleased to report that Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan had the good sense to realize that the little girl on the see-saw flying back into her bed was just not going to make it as anything but a laugh of recognition in their show and left it out.
In point of fact, Young Frankenstein does a pretty damned good job of walking that line. Reading the reviews in Seattle after first seeing the show on Friday, I was surprised how unilaterally they all seemed to argue that the show suffered from the “already know the lines” syndrome, especially in kicking at some of the performances. Not I. I was actually quite pleased to find that six of the seven major performers really did find their own space in creating these legendary characters for the stage, even when uttering the same lines.
The Seventh Man here is Fred Applegate, an accomplished performer and mimic who played Bialystock in London’s production of The Producers in a near letter-perfect recreation of Nathan Lane’s original. Of course, for me, that show always suffered a bit from Matthew Broderick’s efforts to emulate the great Gene Wilder and even more in performances from those imitating him imitating Wilder. In any case, Applegate recreates Ken Mars’ Inspector Kemp and Gene Hackman’s Blind Hermit. He brings great voice to both, but is stuck with very specific boundaries, even though he kills with one song in particular.
Of the other five, Roger Bart screaming is not terribly unlike Gene Wilder screaming, but I’m not sure there was much choice there. A voice is a voice. However, from his first number, Bart finds his own take on the good doctor. His young Frankenstein is an uptight guy whose kinky side is just under the surface, as sung and danced in his first song. “There Is Nothing Like The Brain,” a song which should be the show opener. (More on that on the “notes” page.)
The toughest assignment going in, it seems to me, was Igor, originally created by Marty Feldman, whose turn was quite unexpected by audiences, especially in America. Feldman was an absolute master of physical comedy, which was combined with his bug eyes to make him golden on the screen, especially when Brooks’ gave him work in bits that were really near silent (and Silent) movies. As a result, Christopher Fitzgerald’s show stealing performance here will likely get the most accolades of any of them. His Igor is more Brooksian than Feldman’s and this distinction actually distances the performance from the original. Much like Bart, his first number, “Together Again For The First Time,” gets the ball rolling in fine fashion… and Fitzgerald never fails to hit the movie note and then to take it somewhere else. If Feldman was giving us Stan Laurel, Fitzgerald if giving us Durante. He is upbeat, unafraid to ask for our love, and completely aware of just how kinky things are in every moment of the show.
Sutton Foster is a tall, blonde (here), all-wherever beauty who is not approximating Teri Garr’s performance at all here. She is much more like Ulla from The Producers than Inga from the film. (This is one area of many in the show in which you can feel Brooks embracing what has worked for him before.) In one of the smartest turns in the show, Foster doesn’t make much of an effort to sing with a Transylvanian accent. She speaks with one and in the songs, there are some accent-tinged lyrical choices, but she delivers her songs like an old school Broadway showstopper would. Combine that with Brooks’ tendency to character and lyrical kink and you have a near-perfect combination.
After having seen the show once, my sense was that Foster needed more of a character built around those moments when she wasn’t singing. But the second time around, the ensemble work felt more relaxed and I was happier with her non-singing performance. But even that first time, it was clear that Brooks and Susan Stroman couldn’t ask for a better performance of her opener, “Roll In The Hay,” than Foster’s. Garr was brilliant in the role, playing her as a naïve native. Foster’s Inga is, especially in that number, a blow up doll with a big brain. She is coy, but not naïve. And Bart’s Frankenstein is really a bit of a loser at the start, never the authoritarian that Wilder’s was. He is not in control. But he is a genius of some kind and Inga is the girl that every villager would want, but the girl that wants something none of the dumb villagers have.
Megan Mullally is tasked with the brutal chore of following one of Brooks’ most singular screen partners, Madeleine Kahn. This is one of the performances that, like the show itself, can do perfectly well with most audiences without changing… but should definitely be adjusted before hitting Broadway. And the major adjustment is… do less.
The thing is, Mullally has already created a signature character on television. I have no way of knowing what her range really is. But she is skilled enough a comedianne to do this role without an extra side of ham. And her lock-jawed New England accent, which she has also chosen to sing in, is nothing but a distraction. Mullally reads rich, spoiled, selfish, and sassy from a mile away. We don’t need her to be doing Kate Hepburn any more than Grace Kelly needed to go lock-jawed to do Hepburn’s Philadelphia Story role in High Society. If she dumps the irritating accent, I get the sense that she would make a significant leap forward in a role where she is already pretty damned successful.
Mullally gets two big numbers in the show, one cold and one hot. The audience loves both. The number in the middle, “Surprise” is one of Brooks’ more functional bits. It works, but as is often the case with this show, when it gets frantic, it loses its way a bit.
It was terribly striking, seeing this show a second time around, how incredibly successful every song between one or two characters was… and how much less the ones with more than two were. I will elaborate in my detailed notes, but Young Frankenstein, as it is now, is perhaps the most over chorused show I have ever seen. It’s not that the chorus isn’t extremely talented. But on at least four occasions, Brooks & Co come close to killing bits that work absolutely brilliantly by opening them up into chorus numbers.
The show is, no doubt, at least 20 minutes too long right now. Kicking the chorus to the side in some of these numbers would not only help the numbers, but the length of the show. It is not The Producers, where you have basically a two man show with a few side characters and the chorus dancers make it feel bigger. Here you have one of the most beautifully rendered, complex visual feasts of a production in Broadway history and the intimacy of characters inside of this massive thing is a joy. Chorus boys and girls flying around acrobatically adds almost nothing.
But I digress…
The fifth of The Six is Andrea Martin as Frau Blucher. (Neeeeeeeeigh!) I had my concerns about what she brought to the table from the time I heard she was cast and though some of those concerns were alleviated after seeing her performance, some others were reignited when her stand-in played the role the second time I saw the show. The stand-in, Linda Mugleston, is not the comedian that Martin is. But Martin is not the singer that Mugleston is. More importantly, Martin has a style that both separates her from the rest of the ensemble, but doesn’t (as Cloris Leachman did) come off as dark and kinky.
The frau has one big number, “He Vas My Boyfriend.” Martin does a nice job with it. But she floats a bit in the rest of the show. Is she a sidekick with Igor or is she one of the leads? It’s almost like she calls too much attention to herself to fit in, but isn’t giving a wild enough performance to bring down the house.
I hate to say it, but if I were the producers of the show, I would move hell and earth to get Jackie Hoffman out of Xanadu after her third month on Broadway in that show and give her The Frau to play. She not only knows how to slide into ensemble play expertly, but she would bring a fresh weirdness to The Frau that would not be Leachman or Martin, but truly her own. Simply put, Andrea Martin could easily be Tony nominated for this performance. Jackie Hoffman would be an opening night favorite to win the Tony for Supporting Actress in a Musical, along with Christopher Fitzgerald as Supporting Actor.
The last, with certainly the least words, in this group is Shuler Hensley, as The Monster. He is terrific, though it’s a shame that Brooks & Meehan didn’t find a way to give the mute at least an internal voice (and song) in the show.
Basically, even overweight, the show works. If Brooks & Co were to take the Seattle audience to heart, they probably wouldn’t change a word. Both audiences nearly tore the place down (though the show desperately needs a closing number that simply doesn’t exist and allows the audience to go out humming the last thing they heard.)
Set Designer Robin Wagner, Lighting Designer Peter Kaczorowski, Sound Designer Jonathan Deans, and Special FX Designer Marc Brickman are amongst the superstars here. The second viewing of the show, from the left side of the Orchestra, was quite a shockingly different experience than seeing it from Orchestra Center. The show is such a visual feast… there are so many beautiful and subtle effects and images… that not getting a clear view of the staircase or the forest they ride through or a few of the entrances is really not the same experience at all. I’ll be curious to see how it all fits into the Hilton Theater in New York.
You can’t say “This show will play forever” anymore because even The Producers has closed after not so many years. But it is true that this show is less star driven, at least in perception, than Brooks’ first. Plus, the audience did seem ready to laugh at every joke before it was even told. And as a result, it may be leggier. But right now, it’s not quite as good.
I would say that Young Frankenstein is a B or B+, which is no insult. But it has an A in there, not too far from the surface. I’ll go into detail, but I’d only cut two songs… only de-chorusize two or three more. That would bring the 2:45 running time (First Act, about 1:30 of it) down to a more reasonable 2:25 or so. I’d also cut two horrible gags, that would not take a second out of the show, and a third very good gag that slows things down for no real reason. I would consider the one cast change, even if it would be a little cruel. And really, the show needs a closing song… really.
Notes tomorrow…
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