Mel’s monster roars back to life
N OT only is it alive, it’s a hit.
Mel Brooks spent the past year in the laboratory repairing his 2007 flop “Young Frankenstein” and, by all accounts, succeeded: The show is slaying them in Newcastle, England.
British audiences are giving it standing ovations, howling at lines they’ve heard a million times (“He vas my boyfriend!”) and singing along to “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”
And nobody’s having a better time than Mel. The 91-year-old appeared at a cur- tain call, telling cheering fans, “It’s working. We can take it right to the Garrick Theatre. But the problem is: How are we going to get you all on the bus?”
“Young Frankenstein” wraps up its Newcastle run on Sept. 9, before heading to the Garrick, on London’s West End, for an Oct. 10 opening.
Directed by Susan Stroman, who staged the original, this new version is much tighter. The Broadway production ran nearly three hours. This one clocks in at a brisk two.
“The comedy is front and center, no longer overshadowed by big production numbers,” a source says.
Tom Meehan, Brooks’ longtime writing partner, helped with the revisions here in New York but was too sick to go to London for rehearsals. He died last week at 88. Shuler Hensley reprises his role as the Monster. “We’ll never find anyone better,” Meehan told me last year. Sources say Brooks was so intent on keeping him in the show that he sweetened the actor’s salary and living expenses in England out of his own pocket.
The rest of the cast is English. Brooks has been “all over the show” since rehearsals began in London in June. He moved into the Savoy Hotel and “never stopped working,” a source says. The Broadway production, Brooks’ follow-up to his blockbuster “The Producers,” cost $16 million. So confident were its backers that “Young Frankenstein” opened with a top ticket of $450.
The critics, baited by those prices, were harsh. The show ran a little over a year on the strength of the title but never returned its investment.
If things go as well in London as they did in Newcastle, this new “Young Frankenstein” may be back on Broadway next season.