Young Frankenstein Gets Class Treatment — Undeservedly

Photo: Valley Wind Productions

The problem with the Orpheus Musical Theatre Society’s current winter offering, Young Frankenstein, is that it’s not worth doing.

Devotees of Mel Brooks’ patented brand of low-grade comedy may still want to embrace it, given that it’s a musical version of one of his most popular movies and honours the Brooks tradition of luxuriating in its own bad taste. And let’s face it, there are some on this planet who continue to hail Mel Brooks as some kind of comic genius. It’s also true that his freewheeling lack of inhibition can sometimes disarm an audience as efficiently as a dose of salts: for an example, one need go no further than his first real screen success, the western spoof, Blazing Saddles, and the notorious baked-bean sequence around the campfire and the ensuing discharge — in stereophonic sound no less — of collective cowboy flatulence.

If nothing else, the offering currently on display at the Centrepointe Theatre is a testament not only to Brooks’ continuing dedication to sophomoric vulgarity but to his own durability. That, at the age of 81, he managed to concoct both music and lyrics for a robust female aria in praise of the Monster’s genitalia suggests that Brooks qualifies less as a senior statesman of low-grade entertainment than as an aging “King Leer.”

Chaucer, of course, was only one of many gifted wordsmiths able to give lustre to the dirty joke. Rabelais was another. But Brooks’s real spiritual home belongs to the lower reaches of American burlesque tradition coupled with the type of arrested development reflected in his continuing devotion to the schoolyard snicker.

Film historian David Thomson is not a Brooks fan, complaining of “a brash, superficial personality” and “a facetious, mindless desperation” to grab laughs from anywhere. This was perhaps too harsh an assessment, given that his best films — notably The Producers and Young Frankenstein — were so skillfully rendered within their own subversive context that, to paraphrase Roger Ebert, they made us laugh even though we should have been offended. Furthermore, Brooks, no ignoramus, knew exactly what he was doing. “My movies rise below absurdity,” he once famously observed.

But the stage musical he created from Young Frankenstein in 2007 is a misfire — an ill-conceived follow-up to the legitimate success he enjoyed with his stage version of The Producers. For all its excesses, the 1974 Young Frankenstein succeeded as an impudent send-up of two Thirties horror classics from director James Whale — the 1931 Frankenstein and the 1935 Bride of Frankenstein. On its own level, it was a disciplined piece of filmmaking from a writer-director ready on this occasion to embrace Noel Coward’s famous adage about the need to take light entertainment seriously. And it further bolstered its credentials by being filmed in Gothic black and white.

On stage, however, Young Frankenstein becomes a brash and flashy entertainment that keeps wearing out its welcome. The smut seems more calculated, the double entendres more desperate, the punning more lazy. The show seems overstuffed and over-extended, particularly when it comes to the songs, most of which seem both unnecessary and instantly forgettable.

It’s would be easy to accuse the people at Orpheus of wasting their time and talent with this show. Yet, director Jenn Donnelly’s lively and confident approach recalls the old adage about making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

As a production, it asserts its credentials at the very beginning when Michael McSheffrey, consistently engaging in his performance as youthful doctor Frederick Frankenstein , warbles an ode to the the brain while he brandishes an actual specimen before the rapturous gaze of his New York medical school students. But it isn’t long before he’s whisked off to Transylvania to settle the estate of a deceased grandfather notorious for his success in bringing the dead back to life, and becomes obsessed with continuing these infernal experiments with predictably disastrous results.

As the show proceeds, we get a succession of splendidly etched characterizations: Andrea Black, suitably operatic as Frederick’s Park Avenue fiancee; Graeme Parke in a demented jewel of a performance as his hump-backed factotum, Igor; Emma Sangalli throwing inhibition to the winds as the sex-mad lab assistant who sings ecstatically about the joys of a roll in the hay; Roxane Delisle, a stately delight as the sinister Frau Blucher whose very name sends the horses into a neighing frenzy. And speaking of horses, high marks to Matthw Chin and Katie Chapiro for impersonating a pair of frisky steeds.

Delaney Hinds is that thing of shreds, patches, and stolen brain — The Monster who creates mayhem before the resourceful Frederick transforms him a vaudevillian curiosity. Hinds brings a lumbering sense of both comedy and pathos to the role, and also contributes mightily to the high point of the evening when he and the good doctor materialize in top hat and tails for a bizarre but comically effective rendition of Irving Berlin’s Putting On The Ritz.

So, of course, there are things to enjoy here. The ensemble qualities of this Orpheus production have a glowing assurance. Choreographers Linda Fournier-Brown and France Bastien ensure some engaging dance routines. The orchestra, under musical director Marlene Hudson makes a spirited contribution, And the members of the design team — including Tony Walker (sets), Cynthia Sanoy (costumes), Chris Amott (lighting), John Cybanski (sound), Tracey Lahey (makeup) and Bebe Brunjes (hair) — deserve bouquets for the professional look and sound of the show. As always, with Orpheus, there is a commendable attention to detail: witness the moment when one character emerges in a zooming hairstyle which is a dead ringer for the one displayed by Elsa Lanchester in the classic 1935 film, The Bride Of Frankenstein.

Unfortunately, Young Frankenstein the musical is no classic, but this hasn’t deterred Orpheus from scheduling it in an attempt to attract a younger, more with-it audience. But the bottom line remains: an inferior musical is getting the kind of sleek and superior treatment that it doesn’t really deserve.

Young Frankenstein continues at Centrepointe Theatre to March 15, 2015.

Young Frankenstein

Book by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan

Music and lyrics by Mel Brooks

Orpheus Musical Theatre Society

Director: Jenn Donnelly

Musical Director: Marlene Hudson

Choreographers: Linda Fournier-Brown, France Bastien

Technical Director: Kevin Gehrels

Set: Tony Walker

Sound:  John Cybanski

Lighting: Chris Amott

Costumes: Cynthia Sanoy

Cast:

Frederick………………………………….Michael McSheffrey

Igor………………………………………..Graeme Parke

Elizabeth…………………………………..Andrea Black

Inga………………………………………..Emma Sangal

Frau Blücher………………………………Roxane Delisle

The Monster……………………………….Delaney Hinds

Inspector Kemp/Hermit……………………Sam Smith

Ziggy/Viktor et al………………………….Jim Tanner

Herr Falkstein………………………………Rick Burk

Lawrence/Dr. Acula………………………..Adam Lantos

Ensemble: Tanya Chin, Matt Chin*, Bebe Brunjes, Caitlin Elmslie, Hannah Grant, Bryan Jesmer, Jasmine Lee*, Brennan Richardson, Jeremy Sanders, Erika Séguin, Katie Shapiro, Steve Vesely

*dance captains

Orchestra:

Wendy Berkelaar, Brian Boggs, Nick Cochrane, Nick Dyson, Keith Estabrooks, Pierre Huneault, Drum Hudson, Paul Legault, Tom McMahon, Mike Mullin, Sophia Pan, Mark Rehder, Dave Renaud