Young Frankie Hits The Road And The Skids.

The U.S natioanl tour of last years most notorious Broadway musical, 'Young Frankenstein', has opened in Chicago.
It has a huge tour booked right through until September of next year.
It has however opened to some awful reviews.
Tours like this that seem to be well sold to the regions often disappear without trace after just a few dates.
Most of the theatres theses touring broadway shows are booked into are huge, mostly 2000 plus and even with just a run of normally two or three weeks they rarely sell out.
I see the future not looking to good for this tour and that, Im sure, will put a black cloud over any possible West End production. Those plans have of course gone quiet now the show is dead out of Broadway.




*The Chicago Tribune review:
Shorn of its massive set, its $450 tickets and its overwhelming Broadway hubris, the national touring version of Mel Brooks Young Frankenstein now plays like a moderately amusing wing-and-drop entertainment with a few choice chunks of red comedic meat for loyal Brooks fans who are willing to indulge a strangely chilly show thats cheerfully unwilling to uproot itself from down-and-dirty gags rooted in much-admired parts of the human anatomy.

Shows that leave most of their scenery behind in New York are generally to be hunted down in Chicago and shot. Not in this case. Manhattan can keep or, better yet, recycle, all those asphyxiating bells and whistles from designer Robin Wagner. If they want to save a buck or two on the road by converting almost everything in this screen-to-stage confection back into two dimensions, well, heck, the rest of the show got there first.

I'll say one thing for this tour, now at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, that I couldn't say from New York. At least the production values now match the material.

Sure, Young Frankenstein has some sections most notably, the superb Shuler Hensleys tour-de-force turn as Ritz-lovin Monster that brings a smile to your face. Director/chorographer Susan Stromans Act One nightmare number, Join the Family Business (the shows deftly flipped equivalent to I Want to be a Producer) is cleverly conceived. The blind hermit (now played by that unsung comedic star Brad Oscar) has his moments. This touring cast has an especially strong Igor that little-runt archetype equally beloved of both Brooks and Eric Idle in Cory English. Joanna Glushaks Frau Blucher has a lively pulse.

One can also marvel at the deliciously sardonic way the shows original star, Roger Bart, segues in and out of his numbers. There are some other amusements in the tradition of the justly beloved 1974 movie. And theres a couple of toe-tappin numbers. A couple. That one famous Puttin on the Ritz number is the only real moment when Young Frank is fully and wholly alive as a live show with a purpose.

But as Max Bialystock well knew, there are two kinds of musical comedies hits and misses.
The Producers, which began here in Chicago, was a big fat hit. We all wanted Brooks, an American genius, to ride again to the Loop in comparably dizzying triumph, blazing in a beloved Broadway saddle, acquired at a point in life when lesser mortals are sipping cocktails on a beach. But slice, spice or dice it as one may, Young Frankenstein is a miss. An honorable miss, arguably from the creative end, at least but still a miss. At these prices, anyway.

Its simple as that, really. And unless one is so deeply into Brooks as to require therapy to prevent oneself from constantly reciting his best scenes and I recognize a good percentage of the population is in that very predicament it will be obvious to you.

Why didnt it work? The show lacks heart Hensleys Monster has the emotion but not the lines to do it. Theres no one to really care about. The theatrical momentum never builds. The jokes are too few. Too many scenes and bits die on the Transylvanian vine.

Bart, a brilliant performer who'll return again in glory, either chose or was directed to create such an internally oriented characters character that he has insufficient room for the audience (although in the tour, he both finds more drive and forges a little more of a relationship). And thus Frederick doesnt carry the show.

The female lead (now played by the game Anne Horak) is too bland. And the B-plot involving a romance between The Monster and Beth Currys misfiring Elizabeth has only got worse.

When the show should be embracing us in its metaphoric thematic payoff wherein Victor learns to embrace the Frankenstein name, it gets diverted into yet another reprise of yet another song about phalli.

Why go on? Although it is going on.



_________________________________________________
** THE US NATIONAL TOUR 2009/10**

11/03/2009 - 12/13/2009
CHICAGO
CADILLAC PALACE THEATRE

12/15/2009 - 01/10/2010
WASHINGTON D.C.
OPERA HOUSE

01/12/2010 - 01/24/2010
BALTIMORE
HIPPODROME THEATRE

01/26/2010 - 01/31/2010
ATLANTA
THE FABULOUS FOX THEATRE

02/02/2010 - 02/07/2010
EAST LANSING
WHARTON CENTER

02/09/2010 - 02/14/2010
MINNEAPOLIS
ORPHEUM THEATRE

02/16/2010 - 02/21/2010
KANSAS CITY
MUSIC HALL

02/23/2010 - 03/14/2010
DETROIT
DETROIT OPERA HOUSE

03/16/2010 - 04/18/2010
TORONTO
THE PRINCE OF WALES

04/20/2010 - 05/02/2010
BOSTON
OPERA HOUSE

05/04/2010 - 05/09/2010
PITTSBURGH
BENEDUM CENTER

05/11/2010 - 05/23/2010
ST. LOUIS
FOX THEATRE

05/25/2010 - 06/06/2010
HOUSTON
HOBBY CENTER

06/08/2010 - 06/13/2010
SAN ANTONIO
MAJESTIC THEATRE

06/22/2010 - 06/27/2010
DENVER
BUELL THEATER

06/29/2010 - 07/25/2010
SAN FRANCISCO
GOLDEN GATE

07/27/2010 - 08/15/2010
LOS ANGELES
PANTAGES THEATRE

09/07/2010 - 09/19/2010
COSTA MESA
ORANGE COUNTY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER

Updated On: 11/7/09 at 02:00 PM

I enjoyed it for what it was.
It was never less than entertaining with some great set pieces.

I have the CD of this, I love it! I want it to come over here =)

I was thinking about Young Frankenstein today coming into work and gave it a listen on the MP3, obviously The Producers is a far superior show, had that irony about 2 theatre producers, set in a theatre, however it did very well at the box office, but did not run as long as it many awards suggested it should!

Also The Young Frankenstein equivalent of Puttin on the Ritz, is Springtime for Hitler, however I think the former is a lot better than the latter, one of those magic moments you only get in musicals theatre. YF has plenty of faults and yes The Producers is the more superior show and deserved its Tony's and Olivier awards.

I really don't see them canceling the tour the same way that one might in England. Keep in mind that a vast majority of touring productions are sold in the cities that they are going to as part of a subscription. Take any city that this show is playing in. Boston is the first one that comes to mind. If you live in Boston, there are other shows coming to the city. If you live there, you can buy a subscription to see all the Broadway touring shows that are stopping there at a cheaper price then if you buy a la cart.

This is the same tactic that the non profit theatres use on Broadway to sell tickets. So, for a lot of the stops on tour, the tickets for Young Frankenstein were sold as a subscription package. Also, there are a lot of people who don't know anything about how the show faired in NYC and just look at the quotes pulled out of context from the New York papers that would make this show look good.

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You're right. However, I doubt that this is a show that is going to get pulled from the road.

I don't know about England but on Broadway a touring production company secures the rights for a tour if that given Broadway show decides to do one. So, sometimes on the tour production comapany's website, they would often list that show as an upcoming tour despite the fact that there is or might not even be anything official coming from the office of the producers. Yet, it still gets people on the Broadway forum talking as if it is something official. I don't think that this show is an example of that. Not only because the tour is going on. But, because of the fact that isn't selling that badly enough to pull it.

Keep in mind something. We were talking earlier about how the Palladium is a theatre that has a HUGE seating area almost to the point of it being impossible to sell due to the fact that London has no mid size theatres. Well, I guess The Hilton si the Broadway equalivient of that. Keep in mind that that was the theatre that house Young Frank, and is one that is hard to sell out. In fact, it never had a hit show since it opened a few years ago. True that it had 42nd street. But, that came oh so close to recouping prior to closing.

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I don't know if that's true, Mama. In New York, yes, reviews can make or break a show (though not always, of course) but the majority of shows on Broadway - the exceptions being those put on by non-profits - do not have a subscriber base. Young Frankenstein may get awful reviews in every city it visits, but a good number of (non-refundable) tickets were sold to subscribers months ago. I'm sure it's sold at least a decent amount of seats since it's a known property with many fans.

Bad reviews can definitely hurt single ticket sales in the same city the review was written in, but if the show is only in town Tuesday to Sunday and the review comes out on Friday, they're already halfway through their run.

Isnt the National and Donmar etc our version of non profit?

They have priority bookings for a fee.
Not the same as subscriptions.

Basically a non profit theatre company is one that follows the non profit business model. And, that is that any money that the company makes for profit goes directly back to the company. In other words, it's not like they would use that money so that the boss can get that new fancy sports car or a huge raise etc.

The non profit theatres on Broadway/off Broadway are ones that follow that method. They aren't there to milk the audience for all their worth nor are they there as a means of getting rich. In a commercial venue that is the case. However, in a non profit theatre like Roundabout or Lincoln Center Theatre, their goal is to put money that they would use for one show back into the same pot that they would get money to make a new show out of etc.

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I assume the Domnar, Royal Court and Barbican do not get a grant then?

I hazard a guess that the not for profit theatres in the US do not get an government subsidy, as US is about lean taxation, so not in there core beliefs to fun theatre?

"I assume the Domnar, Royal Court and Barbican do not get a grant then?"

The Donmar is funded through private grants and not ACE.

The Royal Court receives a decent ACE grant but I'd have to look up how much it is again.

The Barbican receives some money from ACE but is funded mostly (to the tune of £14 million I believe) by City of London/Corporation of London.

The only theatres that can get public money are the non profits. Hell, a vast majority of the money that they make is due to donations that are made by the public. If you were to see South Pacific at Lincoln Center Theatre, there is a page or two of the VERY generous donations that that theatre has gotten. Even the theatre name, the Vivian Boumont was named so due to the fact that there was someone who donated enough money to LCT to warrant them naming the the theatre after her.

Almost all if not all of the theatre organizations at Lincoln Center are non profits, and the plus side of donating to any non profit is that it is a donation that can come out of your federal taxes as a deductible.

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