Mel gives Frankenstein a fun new lease of life
Funnyman mel Brooks is finally bringing the stage version of his classic movie young Frankenstein to the UK — after major surgery on his creation, in which songs were cut and lame gags axed.
Brooks will open the show, to be directed by award-winner Susan Stroman, in august of next year.
young Frankenstein ran on Broadway but was over-blown, over-produced and under funny.
The version that will run at the Theatre Royal in newcastle, from august 26, will be almost unrecognisable from what people saw in new york.
michael Harrison, who is producing the new show with Brooks, said five songs had been chopped and two new ones written.
‘They’ve reworked it as a little vaudeville show,’ Harrison said, adding that the show’s book had been extensively changed.
When I last spoke to Brooks, he conceded that the Broadway show wasn’t the ‘intense, wacky comedy I created for Gene Wilder and madeline Kahn’ — two of the stars of the 1974 picture.
‘The people of your country will find many more jokes,’ Brooks said, seriously. ‘They like good humour.’ He added that he and Stroman would be looking for British comedy stars to lead the company here. Brooks had joked to me that, ‘London is chock-full of out-of-work, brilliant actors ... we’ll give some of them a job, and they’ll be exceedingly happy — and so will the audience’.
Harrison agreed that they wanted the lead roles to be filled
by people with ‘real comedy bones, rather than musical theatre bones’.
Stroman has sent one of her close colleagues over to hold meetings with contenders for the main parts.
Stroman, Brooks and Harrison will then decide who best to cast as Frankenstein’s grandson; the creature (who gets to perform a version of Irving Berlin’s Putting On The Ritz); and Inge, the assistant. The production company Fiery Angel will hold rehearsals in London early next summer, before moving the company up to Newcastle for final run-throughs, which Brooks will attend in order to finesse his jokes.
Priority tickets will go on sale from November 7. The hope is that if Young Frankenstein gets the laughs in Newcastle, it will look for another home in the West End.