Mel Brooks | Art on My Sleeve

Review: Young Frankenstein at Matthews Playhouse

By Perry Tannenbaum

July 12, 2024, Matthews, NC – Just turned 98, Mel Brooks has overachieved in every way possible, including longevity. Yes, he wrote the music and lyrics in adapting his own Oscar-winning script, The Producers, into a Broadway musical. If that 2001 megahit was the most prodigious and successful transformation of his career – already past 50 years as a writer, comedian, and actor – then his 2007 follow-up, Young Frankenstein, was the most natural.

Mel had already stolen Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz” and Victor Herbert’s “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life” to gild two of the most shining moments of the original film, shot in retro black-and-white. Composing his musical adaptation, Brooks stole some more, changing the ardent lyrics of “One Song” from Disney’s Snow White into a deliciously salacious “Deep Love” after the Broadway edition’s third coital climax.

There are some rather filthy connotations strewn throughout our horrific romp through Transylvania, enough for Matthews Playhouse to caution parents against bringing youngsters under 13 to the current production. But stage director Jill Bloede presents each granule of this glorious filth with bawdy, bodacious, and childish glee at Fullwood Theater. Scenic designer Marty Wolff, costume designer Yvette Moten, lighting designer Jeffrey Childs, and choreographer Emily Hunter are all let loose to fashion fresh layers of excess and glitz.

A whole second stage opens up behind the teeming downtown Transylvania downstage when we reach Victor Frankenstein’s secret laboratory hidden behind the mad scientist’s library – an installation that permits special effects designer Roy Schumacher to make the moments of creation and coition inside the lab more spectacular.

Brooks’s venerated comedy reputation and Bloede’s every-shtick-in-the-book approach have drawn a bounty of professional grade talent to this cast. Wearing a frizzy Gene Wilder hairdo, Neifert Enrique cements his elite credentials as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, grandson of Mary Shelley’s “Modern Prometheus,” bringing a youthful wonderment to the role that makes all the lead women’s roles a little plumier. If you missed Nick Culp’s outdoor exploits as Columbia in The Rocky Horror Picture Show during the pandemic, one of Actor’s Theatre’s valedictory efforts, his Matthews debut as Igor will likely come as a revelation, though he looked way closer to Fester Addams than to a hump-backed Marty Feldman. Lungs of steel and a wicked comedy flair.

With Mary Lynn Bain as noli-me-tangere New York socialite Elizabeth Benning and Gabriella Gonzalez as Inga, the cheery and buxom Transylvania peasant, the contrast between “Please Don’t Touch Me” and “Roll in the Hay” is as radical as any horny Frankenstein could wish. Bridging this chasm is The Monster, endowed by Brooks with a super-virility that surely would have drawn a polite giggle from Ms. Shelley. Hulking Matthew Corbett, roaring and bellowing with the best, makes Elizabeth’s deflowering a special joy, for while he is melting Bain’s ice maiden inhibitions, Brooks cooly has him overcoming his fear of fire.

Now we easily can find on YouTube that Peter Boyle actually danced in the Hollywood version, but the “Ritz” extravaganza concocted by Hunter is arguably more demanding, with Moten outfitting a good chunk of the Transylvanian peasantry in white tuxes. Top hats and canes for all the gents! We can’t call him Bojangles just yet, but Corbett contributes handsomely to the tap segments.

With leading roles in The Producers, La Cage aux Folles, Cabaret, and Ruthless! over the past 30 years, the charismatic Steve Bryan is a bit of overkill for his cameo as the Hermit. Decked out like a medieval monk, with a wig worthy of Joan Crawford in her dotage, Bryan is perfection as The Monster’s blind and bumbling host, not a trace of a smirk as he scalds his starving guest with soup – a comical affirmation of the beast’s docility as we delight in Corbett’s bellowing. Typical of his elegance, Bryan didn’t milk the last drop of deathless pathos out “Please Send Me Someone” before Corbett’s on-cue arrival answered his lonely prayers. True, Bryan got down on his knees begging, but he never once cried out for his mammy. Maybe next week.

Review: The Producers

By Perry Tannenbaum

When I first saw Mel Brooks’ The Producers on Broadway in 2001, my disappointment in not seeing Nathan Lane in the role of Max Bialystock was assuaged by the realization that the show was still so damn good with last-minute replacement Brad Oscar filling the megastar’s shoes. Each of the successive versions I’ve seen in Charlotte – the national tour at Ovens Auditorium in 2004 and the CPCC Summer Theatre production at Halton Theater in 2009 – has only strengthened my conviction that Lane was not an essential ingredient in the show’s success.

But isn’t it too much to expect a smashing Producers at Theatre Charlotte, where they don’t have a Broadway-sized budget – or even a spacious orchestra pit like the Halton’s? Make a couple of allowances and then prepare to be astonished.

Scenic design by Chris Timmons is cheesy, even by community theatre standards, and there are no live musicians in sight – or out of sight – at the Queens Road barn. Once you get past those visible and audible austerities, you can revel in the costume designs by Rachel Engstrom, so crucial to the big “Springtime for Hitler” climax, and in the deep cast, so necessary in putting over Brooks’ comedy and his schlocky score.

Benefitting from the embarrassment of riches that showed up at auditions, director Caroline Bower hasn’t squandered her good fortune. In David Catenazzo as Max, she has found a leading man who is as seedy as Timmons’ scenery. Mostly a secret kept in recent years by JStage at the Levine Jewish Community Center, where he has starred in A Year With Frog and Toad and Fiddler on the Roof, Catenazzo proves to have a strong singing voice to go along with his comedic gifts. He absolutely oozes corruption, eager to enlist humdrum accountant Leo Bloom to cook his books, eager to bilk show investors in a surefire flop, and rabid to shtup Ulla, the voluptuous Swedish actress who turns up early for auditions.

A second solid gold debut comes from Landon Sutton as the diffident Leo, more than nerdy enough for a numbers crusher who discovers how to pocket a shady profit from a Broadway flop. There’s pallid innocence to Sutton’s manner as Leo, plus a little endearing pudginess, that works well when he’s too timid to plunge into the crooked scheme he has inspired. But there’s a surprisingly strong and smooth singing voice when Leo jumps aboard on the reprise of “We Can Do It,” and hormonal heat in “That Face,” his serenade to Ulla.

Brooks’ book and lyrics are so politically incorrect that they still seem to draw a pass from the audience – apparently willing to overlook the sexist attitude toward Ulla and the mockery directed at Franz Liebkind, the pigeon-keeping diehard Nazi who has penned the worst musical script that Max has ever read, Springtime for Hitler. Bower makes the right choices in casting the very un-Swedish Hailey Thomas as Ulla, draping her curves with a modicum of modesty, and limiting her flirtatiousness in comparison with Max’s leering. The Sveedish accent is ba-a-a-d, which is paradoxically good, and she’s positively smashing in her Nazi eagle outfit.

Neo-Nazis are less of a laughing matter than they were 18 years ago, so it’s also wise to have Chip Bradley tone down Franz’s achtung authoritarian qualities and pile on some extra daffiness. The result is the best performance I’ve seen from Bradley, particularly when he shows us all how Hitler should be sung at Springtime auditions. Bradley’s eccentric excellence is sustained when we encounter the Greenwich Village artistes who will direct Franz’s stinker, Roger De Bris and his loyal assistant Carmen Ghia, handpicked for their inabilities.

Here we are blessed with the gay flamboyance of Matt Kenyon as Carmen and the Ethel Merman regality of Paul Reeves Leopard as Roger. It takes a professional-grade queen to pull off Carmen’s arrogant servility and Roger’s ornate Chrysler Building party dress. Kenyon and Leopard have the goods. Leopard is certainly a different kind of Hitler than Bradley when Roger must sub for Franz on opening night.

On my fourth go-round with The Producers, I wasn’t laughing out loud until the Springtime for Hitler auditions, where I found myself enjoying the outrageousness as much as the newbies in the audience. I suspect their expectations were surpassed as much as mine were 18 years ago when Lane’s absence was announced as I stood in line outside the St. James Theatre. Enthusiasm for the Little Old Ladies and their tap-dancing walkers crackled like I remembered it even if the shtick has gone a little stale for me.

Iesha Nyree as Lick-me Bite-me and Layla Sutton as Hold-me Touch-me rounded out the named characters in the cast, which lists another 14 ensemble members who make choreographer Lauren “Loz” Gibbs look good. So what ever happened to the biddie named Kiss-me Feel-me? A victim of downsizing, we must presume.