The cast has been announced for the London production of Mel Brooks' Broadway flop YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. I enjoyed it so much when I saw the dress rehearsal of the original show in New York that I paid to see it a second time!
However there's no doubt that it was dwarfed by the vast New Amsterdam Theatre and buckled under the weight of expectations that it would be as funny as Brook's previous smash hit The Producers and worth the record breaking, high ticket prices cynical and exploitative producers were charging.
So I think this smaller London production will at last release it's full comic potential in a new staging by the originating Broadway director/choreographer Susan Stroman, at London's much smaller Garrick Theatre, particularly as she's teamed up with her regular British casting director the brilliant Jill Green.
The production will star the gorgeous Hadley Fraser in the title role who's demonstrated enormous skill in musicals and straight theatre at the Donmar Warehouse recently. Comedian Ross Noble will play his hunchbacked assistant and I'm delighted to discover that, Leslie Joseph, star of the much loved TV comedy Birds of a Feather will play the freaky and sinister housekeeper Frau Blucher.
It's been my privilege to direct Leslie on two occasions and she is a wonderful comic performer who gives 110% to everything she does. I learnt a lot about the mechanics of comedy from her. She'll be hilarious.
Other leading roles will be by Dianne Pilkington (much acclaimed as both Elphaba and Glinda in Wicked) and West End regulars Summer Strallen and Patrick Clancy.
They'll be joined by an ensemble of Imogen Brooke, Matt Crandon, Nathan Elwick, Kelly Ewins-Prouse, Andrew Gordon-Watkins, Sammy Kelly, Richard Pitt, Harriet Samuel-Gray, Gemma Scholes, Emily Squibb, Aron Wild and Josh Wilmott.
The press release describes the show as "Based on the hilarious 1974 film and co-written with Thomas Meehan" and summarises the plot as follows: "Young Frankenstein, the wickedly inspired re-imagining of the Mary Shelley classic, sees Frederick Frankenstein, an esteemed New York brain surgeon and professor, inherit a castle and laboratory in Transylvania from his deranged genius grandfather, Victor Von Frankenstein. He now faces a dilemma - does he continue to run from his family’s tortured past or does he stay in Transylvania to carry on his grandfather’s mad experiments reanimating the dead and, in the process, fall in love with his sexy lab assistant Inga?"
We’re barely into Spring but it’s already time to look forward to Pantomime, the UK’s traditional Christmas theatre treat. Two PR firms have announced festive productions in the last few days, one gigantic the other niche.