How to Go
What: “The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein.”
Where: Schuster Center, Second and Main streets.
When: Tuesday through Sunday, Oct. 4-9.
Tickets: $37-$92 (plus a $4 service charge for phone and online orders).
More Info: (937) 228-3630, toll free at (888) 228-3630 or online at www.ticketcenterstage.com.
Pre-Show: “Background on Broadway” talks will be presented at 7 p.m. Thursday and 1 p.m. Saturday at the Schuster.
Laboratory experiments sometimes go awry.
Those involving human beings generally do so, with an occasional brilliant outcome.
Mary Shelley couldn’t have envisioned a theatrical scientist with the mind of Mel Brooks when she published her novel “Frankenstein” (or “The Modern Prometheus”) in 1818.
A fast forward from then to now leads to the Schuster Center, where a new national tour of Brooks’ madcap stage musical “Young Frankenstein” will open the Victoria Theatre Association’s 2011-12 season Oct. 4-9.
The local premiere is a fresh resuscitation of the musical comedy that opened on Broadway in 2007 as a spinoff of Brooks’ acclaimed 1974 film with Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn and Marty Feldman. It ran for more than a year.
Even in the crammed horror/spoof/mad scientist genre, Brooks’ work tends to stand out.
Consider just a few of the screen versions Shelley’s gothic horror novel has spawned since the first — a 16-minute silent movie in 1910:
The 1931 film with Boris Karloff as the monster, granddaddy of them all.
Spinoffs including “Bride of Frankenstein” (1935), “Son of Frankenstein” (1939), “The Curse of Frankenstein” (1957), “The Revenge of Frankenstein” (1958), “The Evil of Frankenstein” (1964) and “Blackenstein” (1973), in which an actor named Joe De Sue plays a Vietnam vet transformed into a relentlessly lumbering killer.
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” (1948).
“Flesh for Frankenstein” (1973), produced by Andy Warhol.
“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (1975).
Brooks’ film used “Son of Frankenstein” as a springboard,
Interspersed with original Brooks songs including “The Brain,” “Roll in the Hay,” “He Vas My Boyfriend,” “He’s Loose,” “Transylvania Mania” and a dazzling exploitation of “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” “Young Frankenstein” followed Brooks’ much smashier screen-to-stage hit “The Producers” (2001-7 on Broadway). Hence its official title as “The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein.”
The setting is Transylvania Heights, 1934. Characters include Frederick Frankenstein, nephew of a newly deceased mad scientist and dean of anatomy at the Johns, Miriam and Anthony Hopkins School of Medicine; his chilly fiancee (who sings “Don’t Touch Me”), a hunchback named Igor, a yodeling lab assistant named Inga and the mysterious Frau Blucher, whose name alone scares the horses.
It may sound like an extension of the plot, but the tour coming to the Schuster was actually made in Utica, N.Y. It was built and tested at the Stanley Center for the Arts there starting Sept. 19. First performance was Sept. 28.
Dayton will be the third stop, following Worcester, Mass., and just before Hershey, Pa.
The show is not recommended for kids younger than 13.
Brooks is best known as a film director. His credits also include “Blazing Saddles” (1974), “High Anxiety” (1977), “History of the World: Part I” (1981) and “Spaceballs” (1987).
He was a TV writer when he made his first few stabs at Broadway — sketches for the musical revue “Leonard Sillman’s New Faces of 1952” (with a cast including Eartha Kitt, Paul Lynde and Carol Lawrence), the book for the musical “Shinbone Alley” (1957) and the book for the musical “All American” (1962), an experimental melding of engineering and football.
Jerome Doerger, a recent musical theater graduate of Wright State University (“Titanic,” “Sweeney Todd” and “Thoroughly Modern Millie”) is a member of the touring company.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2377 or tmorris@Dayton DailyNews.com.
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