Frankenstein On Stage

In 1981, Victor Gialanella’s adaptation of FRANKENSTEIN ran for one performance at the Palace Theater.  The overblown production featured Diane Wiest, John Glover, John Carradine and David Dukes as Victor Frankenstein.  The show had received rave reviews out of town in a Loretto-Hilton Repertory Theater of St. Louis production.  The powers that be thought that a souped up version to fill the Palace Theater would be a good idea, but the good of the play was lost in the overly ambitious Broadway mounting.  Ever since the publication of Mary Shelley’s novel, stage productions of the story started to pop up.  For a time, a Hamilton Deane stage version, following the success of his DRACULA production in London, was a big success.  Although, the depiction of Dr. Frankenstein bringing his creature to life has always been technically problematic and after the success of the Universal film with Boris Karlof, returning to a stage version has been a challenge for audiences.

I saw a college production of the Gialanella version once and the script seemed sturdy enough, but the production value was half of what it needed to be to make the story believable.  You kind of had to chuckle at the melodrama of it all, but it did seem like, in the right hands, the thing just might work.  Since then I have taken every opportunity to see stage versions of FRANKENSTEIN.  Because the novel is in the public domain, people keep trying to write what they think will be the perfect version.  What follows are my impressions of several seen in New York.

Monster

I’m pretty convinced now that you can’t do a stage play of FRANKENSTEIN that works.  The Classic Stage Company tried it with a world premier called MONSTER.  It was penned by Neal Bell.  Mr. Bell gets his plays done in regional theaters and teaches playwriting at NYU and Yale.  He tried to make it work, ignoring the classic Universal film trappings and giving us that sort of real person talking monster that Kenneth Branaugh created in his FRANKENSTEIN film.  It had that no set thrust stage treatment with stark lighting that Classic Stage prefers and so the story, which I think of as a horror fantasy, lacked all sense of environment.  Actually, I really do want a FRANKENSTEIN with a castle and chains and big green monster strapped to a table lifted into the lightening storm.  “It’s Alive!” the doctor is supposed to scream.  But how could he scream it without it being comical in all the wrong ways?  The Hollywood version would be camp and the closely adapted after the novel version translates into a long dull evening.  All anyone is waiting for is the monster to come alive and start terrorizing the villagers, but it didn’t happen that way and still, the endeavor was dumb.  Jake Weber unceremoniously played Victor Frankenstein.  He was the best thing in the show, and yet his fine film career didn’t gain him special billing as you’d think it would.  Actually, he really isn’t known, but he works constantly and yet he was given seventh billing as the lead.   Mr. Weber must be humble, but the man deserved a little more credit, especially considering his role.

Frankenstein, The Rock Opera

My coworker, Carrie, was hooked up with a reading of a rock opera version of FRANKENSTEIN.  It was partially written by her long-time friend, Justin Perkinson.  For four years, he, along with Jon Greenlee and Ty Morse had been working on this show and now they were getting it up on its feet.  Carrie helped to produce a reading with invited guests and some industry people to see it.  A modest cast was engaged to play many parts of this rather ambitious attempt to adapt the famous horror novel.  It was taken after the novel and not the Hollywood classic, but the problem I always find with stage adaptations of the story is that I miss the Hollywood classic.  To me, and countless others, the James Whale film from Universal Pictures is the one and only FRANKENSTEIN, as unfair as that is to Mary Shelley.  However, unlike MONSTER discussed earlier, the music really helped tell the story in a new way that kept my interest.  I wouldn’t say it was particularly tuneful–no songs caught my attention as being interesting on their own, but the score as a whole was interesting and could achieve a popular following if presented just right.

The storytelling is problematic in the first half hour as it leap-frogs through what we know of the story from the film.  There is no explanation as to how Victor Frankenstein has figured out how to create life, how he gets the idea to dig up bodies, how he comes to even give the crazy idea a try.  It takes only three songs out of 33 to hear the words, “It’s alive!”  There is no build up to the monster at all.  So, the monster really isn’t the big deal here.  This monster learns how to talk like a human rather quickly, thanks to a narrator speeding us along through time.  The monster finds out that no one likes him and then forces Victor to build him a Bride.  We never get to see the Bride, though it is suggested that Victor makes the attempt. 

I think the creators have something here that could go over, but the storytelling has to improve or it could go the way of the failed Broadway musical of DRACULA quite easily.  One could see a big show in the material, but it’s an awfully risky prospect.  Do you satisfy the film buffs or the champions of the novel?  Do you do both?  Is it going to be a rock concert or a regular musical staging, save for the rock score?  At this point, I would go with rock concert, so as to rid all expectations of seeing the movie on stage.

Frankenstein, the Musical

Every time I go to a new stage version of FRANKENSTEIN, they stress the supposedly unique detail that “this version” is based on the novel by Mary Shelley.  Well, they’re all based on the novel because the novel is in the public domain.  But, the real reason this fact is stressed is so the public won’t expect the Universal film starring Boris Karlof.  Something fascinates people about the idea of doing a stage play of FRANKENSTEIN, but I say what really fascinates them is Boris Karlof and not Mary Shelley, though they may not know it.  I myself am forever missing the iconic moments, which are from the film and not the novel.  I realize now, after this bland adaptation set to music by Mark Baron, Jeffrey Jackson and Gary P. Cohen, that what I really want is a good lightening storm that shocks a giant man made up of body parts to life, complete with Doctor Frankenstein yelling out, “It’s Alive!”

This musical, featuring a miscast Hunter Foster as the good doctor, spends too much time describing the good stuff that has happened off stage.  There is no big moment of the creature coming to life and when he does arrive he looks like a rock star.  The monster  (known as the creature in this version) was played by Steve Blanchard, whose body language has been the same strange wide-stance, pigeon-toed performance that I have seen him do in shows for years.  Finally, he has been given a role where his routine makes sense, but over all it was an unbelievable character.  Foster, who does his level best, is at heart a comedic actor and has comedic features.  He somehow seemed like a muppet trying to be serious and it is a hard sell.  Christian Noll as his true love, sang sweetly and was genuine, but her role amounted to very little.  The angst-ridden ensemble narrated through songs of the pop-opera kind that we were finally finished with when Frank Wildhorn’s musical version of DRACULA closed.  It is amazing that the producers really thought this thing would go over, but try though they did, this FRANKENSTEIN was inactive and dull and could never scare us, much less satisfy as a musical.

Young Frankenstein

After the mixed reviews, I took my time getting to YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN.  However, the thing about me is that I have to see every musical on Broadway no matter what, so I eventually had to see it for myself.  I thought that it was probably going to be mildly entertaining and worth a night out no matter what and that was just about right.  A lot of the show is very entertaining, but the production should have been much funnier.  This big splashy show is made by exactly the same team that made THE PRODUCERS, which was an out of control laugh-riot when I first saw it in the final week of previews.  I went back to THE PRODUCERS to see the first replacement cast and it was still hysterical.  YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN doesn’t begin to match that kind of fun, but it suffers only by comparison.  The more recent Mel Brooks show is still delightful enough, which isn’t the greatest review, but it’s far from the worst.  Brooks has written a score that sounds like the kind written in the 1930s, which is ideal since the show is set in the 1930s world of the Universal horror movies.  Not surprisingly, however, the best number in the show was written by Irving Berlin.  “Puttin’ On the Ritz,” which had to be included because it is such a memorable scene in the film, is a better than good hat and cane number with the entire cast in tuxedoes.  The number was filled with clever little novelty moments and even some innovation of the kind we expect from Susan Stroman choreography.  Nothing else matches it though, and so it is disappointing Susan Stroman and disappointing Mel Brooks.  Even so, I marveled at Robin Wagner’s sets, adored William Ivey Long’s spirited costumes, found Peter Kaczorowski’s lighting design to be spectacular and generally chuckled through the entire evening with a smile on my face. 

Although Roger Bart was the official star as Dr. Frankenstein, the real star of the evening and certainly the most brilliantly funny performance came from Christopher Fitzgerald as Igor.  Every time Igor came on stage the show jumped into a hyper drive of hilarity.  Some of Igor’s jokes come right out of the film, but much of the laughs came from Fitzgerald’s own comic innovation (Marty Feldman who?).  Michele Ragusa did her best Megan Mullally impression as Elizabeth and would come off better if she could manage an original performance.  Beth Leavel (replacing Andrea Martin) made a respectable Frau Blucher (cue horse whinny), but this is Mel Brooks, so she shouldn’t be respectable.  Shuler Hensley as the Monster was marvelous.  He didn’t get to really show off until the last quarter of the show, but he proved to be quite wonderful, especially after the Monster gains his smarts and adopts an English accent and opera singing voice.

  Comparing it to the other musical comedies on Broadway in the last few years, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN was as good as anything else, but there was just that deep feeling of disappointment that the project didn’t live up to the greatness of the creators’ past efforts. That said, I’m glad that it exists and I’m glad that I saw it.

All said, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN was probably the most satisfying adaptation of the story I have seen on stage––probably because we weren’t supposed to take it seriously.  There are a dozen other adaptations of the story handled by various licensing houses and I imagine, dozens more, that pop up in little theaters here and there.  No doubt, New York will see several more as the years go on.  If the new production of DRACULA for December 2009 is a hit, it is quite likely that a new production of FRANKENSTEIN will follow.  FRANKENSTEIN always follows closely on the heals of DRACULA, for as horror goes, these two monsters share the crown.