The more dire our economy gets, the more audiences seem to crave comfort food. And that is exactly what you get with “Young Frankenstein,” currently on view at the PNC’s Broadway Across America series at the Benedum Center. Only I would say that the Mel Brooks musical is continuous dessert, much like one giant layer cake. In fact, that was probably the only thing missing on stage — having one of the characters get it right in the kisser.
“Young Frankenstein” had everything else. Mel liked to keep the jokes coming, knowing that one of them would eventually hit the target. Okay, so it was overkill. But then Mel has always packed a big vaudevillian punch — a straight man, second and third bananas, one-liners out the wazoo and plenty of leggy babes to “fill” things out.
After all, making a film/musical/musical film out of the “The Producers” worked, so why not another of the comedian’s success stories, “Young Frankenstein?” It boasted a, pardon the expression, “killer” cast (Gene Wilder, Teri Garr, Cloris Leachman, Marty Feldman and more) and still has a strong cult following, like “Spamalot,” after more than 30 years.
Okay, so I’ve made a lot of comparisons. But yes, there is plenty about “Young Frankenstein” that just reminds you of something else, including the dancing.
With a new score of rollicking songs, Broadway superdirector/choreographer Susan Stroman was chosen to bring Mel’s rock ’em, sock ’em style of humor to life. (Can’t you just hear the “ba-doom-boom” from the drummer?)
After all, she is prolific, creative and prop-sensitive (pick axes, ropes and gold miners’ pans in “Crazy for You” and that big keyboard in “Big”). Although her forays into abstract dance with the Martha Graham company and for New York City Ballet had mixed results, it only proved that she is more successful with theatrical thread, as when she stretched the boundaries of the Broadway musical into the dancical, “Contact.”
Well what does she have to work with here in “Young Frankenstein?” A score of nearly 20 tunes, all of them upbeat, but not especially memorable. But, as she proved in “The Producers,” Susan Stroman had the comedic chops to go toe-to-toe with Mel.
Her voyagers materialized on stage like the Transylvanian mist before boarding a ship and broke into a terpsichorean accompaniment like a ’30’s Ziegfeld musical in “Please Don’t Touch Me.” Frau Blucher manipulated a chair like the women in Ron Field’s “Cabaret” during “He Vas My Boyfriend.”
Actually the highlight was a take-off on the iconic Fred Astaire routine, “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” where the master tapper burst through mirrored doors to encounter a whole line of men dressed in top hat and tails. This choreographer imitated that feeling by expertly multiplying her monsters, all of whom were actually quite nimble in stubby platform tap shoes.
Only “A Roll in the Hay” felt original, though, when a couple of horses had human reactions to Inga’s romp in the hay wagon behind them. Madcap and mad funny.
So this trip down memory lane had a roller coaster feel about it. It was big and blowsy and, what was that other ” b?” Oh yes, burlesque, another distinctly American show biz form. Maybe this hybrid music and dance show was patched together like the immensely adorable Monster. But in the end, if “Young Frankenstein” was your just dessert, that meant it left that much more room for the belly laughs.
Posted by jvranish 
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