Young Frankenstein: The New Mel Brooks Musical
|
List Price: Our Price: $14.99 You Save: $3.99 (21%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $8.93 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Young Frankenstein: The New Mel Brooks Musical
Free Music Review: This Monster Needs to Be Revived
Hit: 3 Stars
Mel Brooks has devoted much time and attention to his lyrics and music to make sure that we have the best possible time that we can, and this is clear on the CD. What is not clear, however, is a sense of time and place. As impressive as this score sounds, at no point does it offer the listener the comedic gloom that as the set-up.
The first big and surprising disappointment is Roger Bart as Dr. Frankenstein who never establishes a cohesive character. Sutton Foster, known for blowing the ceiling off a theatre with a whisper, barely musters much of anything as Inga. She is shockingly subdued and bland.
Faring better are Megan Mulally & Andrea Martin who both have created interesting characters and maintain humorous vocal qualities throughout. Shuler Hensley is surprisingly unfunny as he mumbles his way through Act Two's "Puttin' On The Ritz," but by the sounds of it, Susan Stroman has just secured another nomination for choreography.
Perhaps this show is better seen than heard. Well, that remains to be seen.
Free Music Review: Terrific Follow-up to "The Producers"
Hit: 4 Stars
Critical reviews of Mel Brook's new musical, "Young Frankenstein", have so far been mixed, but this seems to be somewhat of an expected backlash against Mr. Brooks. His first effort, 2001's "The Producers", was a runaway smash - winning a record number of Tonys and making any follow-up somewhat doomed. While I have yet to see the production (my tickets are for May), I find the score thoroughly enjoyable & a solid sophomore effort.
The amazing cast, led by Roger Bart, Megan Mullally, Sutton Foster, Christopher Fitzgerald, and Andrea Martin, sounds great. The score has a few weak links, but there are several terrific songs. Best tracks:
Please Don't Touch Me
Together Again
Roll In The Hay
Transylvania Mania
Listen To Your Heart
Puttin' On The Ritz (Irving Berlin's standard used in the 1974 film for which the musical is based)
Deep Love
Free Music Review: Together Again for the First Time
Hit: 3 Stars
While far from the fiasco the NY critics claimed it to be, Young Frankenstein is a musical comedy bereft of big laughs. It is however, an entertaining old-fashioned show, albeit one with crude humor. Mel Brooks' score is an affectionaet homage to MGM musicals, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin and Doug Besterman's orchestrations are appropriately sumptuous and "old school". If you enjoy old fashioned scores, you will find a lot here to enjoy.Free Music Review: Falls Monstrously Short
Hit: 2 Stars
I have to admit that I had a bias against Young Frankenstein. So much of what I had heard about the actions and attitudes of the personnel involved had left a bad taste in my mouth. To wit:
- The obscenely high top ticket price of $450
- The fact that the producers won't make their weekly numbers public
- That Mel Brooks and director/choreographer Susan Stroman toured the house of the Hilton Theater (a la circling vultures) while the poor cast of the late and unlamented show The Pirate Queen were rehearsing on the stage
- That Mel Brooks refuses to join the Writers Guild
- That despite lukewarm out-of-town reviews, the show underwent only cosmetic changes after its Seattle tryout.
The whole thing just smacks of arrogance. The creators are simply assuming that the show will be a smash. They probably figure that after the huge success of The Producers, that they have an automatic hit on their hands with Young Frankenstein. The show is at its best when it veers from slavishly aping the movie. This isn't very often. The creators seem content merely to paste uninspired numbers into what they consider an already-winning formula. It seems to have taken very little effort, and by that I don't so much mean "effortless" as "lazy."
Act 1 is a series of joyless, obligatory production numbers, and comic bits that fall flat. Overall, the score is one step above terrible, redeemed only by the occasional semi-effective number, such as "Deep Love," the Elizabeth character's big second-act showpiece. Most of the lyrics are at best forgettable, at worst awkward and amateurish. Most of the songs are generic placeholders: places where there should be a song, but Brooks hasn't really gone through the effort of thinking through what the song should say, or more important how to make it funny.
The Young Frankenstein score is very similar to that of Spamalot: it doesn't even try to be good. But then, just as with Spamalot, people aren't coming to hear a quality score, and they certainly don't get one. They just want to see one of their favorite movies on stage. Just validate my expectations; don't try to stretch the form or create genuine quality.
The marvelously talented Sutton Foster is simply wasted as the pulchritudinous lab assistant Inga. She doesn't have a single second of stage time that was worthy of her considerable gifts. Christopher Fitzgerald hams it up shamelessly as Igor, often quite effectively, but just as often to silence from the house. Andrea Martin makes the best of the cardboard role of Frau Blucher. Her "He Vas My Boyfriend" was the only number in Act 1 that I found worth applauding.
The biggest disappointment was Megan Mullaley, who seemed with her every breath to be trying to avoid being Karen Walker. The material Brooks has provided her is especially weak, but Mullaley did retain a small remnant of the spark I recall from when she was Rosemary to Matthew Broderick's J. Pierpont Finch in the 1995 revival of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying.
Young Frankenstein will very likely be a hit, but certainly not because of its characterless score. Will it run for six years, like Mel Brooks' last Broadway effort? I've sort of given up trying to make those kind of predictions. All I can say is that, as far as quality musical theater goes, Young Frankenstein falls monstrously short.
Free Music Review: TRANSYLVANIA MANIA(c)
Hit: 5 Stars
"Young Frankenstein" is the second Mel Brooks movie musicalized for the broadway stage by Mel Brooks and as such the humor doesn't rise much higher than the level of a precocious dirty-minded schoolboy but dirty-minded schoolboys can be funny and Mr. Brooks is the head of the crass(pun intended). I enjoy low-brow humor so all this is okay with me. If you take the liner notes at face value Mr. Brooks music and lyrics are intended in the style of his heroes Cole Porter and Irving Berlin-not even close-but Mr. Brooks manages some catchy tunes, in fact at times his music is funnier than his lyrics but they both come together like a tasty potluck dinner.
On CD Roger Bart seems to be a mellower Frederick Von Fronkensteen but his singing is fine and Christopher Fitzgerald as Igor, he with the movable hump, comes across so vividly you can almost picture his performance with your minds eye. Sutton Foster-I fell in love after "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and as Inga her "Roll in the Hay" is an invitation I'd gladly accept and her yodeling is so hot it would melt the snow caps of the Alps.
There are two tricky roles that are impossible to compete with, Cloris Leachman forever owns the role of Frau Blucher but Andrea Martin aquits herself quite well and her "He Vas My Boyfriend is a hoot and a half and I admire her ability to keep a straight face singing those nutso lyrics. The second role is that of Elizabeth, Dr Frankensteins ditzy fiance. Madeline Kahn can't be topped and wisely Megan Mullaly doesn't try to but brings her own personality to the role. I must admit I was kinda impressed with her singing on her big 11 o'clock number "Deep Love" despite the fact the double entendres and innuendos were about as subtle as a ton of bricks.
So if you want to dance the new craze "The Transylvania Mania" or are just as happy to be "Puttin' On The Ritz" the Broadway Cast Cd is there to assist you. Enjoy.