Reuters North American News Service, November 9th, 2007
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mel Brooks' stage version of
"Young Frankenstein," his follow-up to one of the biggest hits
in Broadway history, has opened to a collective shrug of the
shoulders from critics.
This is not "The Producers," New York newspaper critics
said in Friday reviews, referring to the Brooks Broadway hit
that ran for six years.
They found lots of things to like in "Young Frankenstein,"
which like "The Producers" is an adaptation of a Brooks movie,
although no critic said the show was worth $450 a seat, the
show's top price.
Brooks reassembled much of the creative team that made "The
Producers" a Broadway smash, including director and
choreographer Susan Stroman, who was singled out for praise for
the new show's big production numbers.
Actress Sutton Foster seems to have stolen the show as Dr.
Frankenstein's sexy lab assistant Inga with her yodeling in a
number called "Roll in the Hay" being particularly well
received.
Still, the critics were disappointed, if only because they
so loved "The Producers."
"The show takes many of the elements that made 'The
Producers' such a delight and then saps them of their joy by
overselling them," said Ben Brantley in The New York Times.
The show "feels less like a sustained book musical than an
overblown burlesque revue, right down to its giggly
smuttiness," he he said.
Brantley panned Roger Bart in the lead role of Frederick
Frankenstein, calling him "overwhelmed," though Clive Barnes in
the New York Post called Bart "a great comic lead."
Shuler Hensley as the monster "fills the creature's
oversize shoes with flair," wrote Joe Dziemianowicz in the
Daily News.
Megan Mullally as Frankenstein's fiancee Elizabeth, Andrea
Martin as Frau Blucher, and Christopher Fitzgerald as Igor all
fared pretty well with the critics, who nonetheless said they
faced difficult comparisons to the talented cast of the 1974
movie of the same name.
"When you trade on a legend, you have to match up," Barnes
said in the Post. "'Young Frankenstein' does not -- quite."
Frank Scheck in the Hollywood Reporter was more forgiving.
"If the show doesn't live up to the level of its
predecessor -- nor, for that matter, to the comedic brilliance
of its film inspiration -- it still registers as a hilarious
crowd-pleaser," he said.
(Editing by Bill Trott)
