Tony Award winners Roger Bart and Shuler Hensley will reprise the roles of Dr. Frederick Frankenstein and The Monster in the first national tour of The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein. The Young Frankenstein tour will launch September 29, 2009 at the Providence Performing Arts Center in Providence, Rhode Island.
Bart and Hensley who both starred in the original Broadway cast of Young Frankenstein will be joined on tour by Cory English (Igor), Tony Award nominee Brad Oscar (Inspector Kemp/Blind Hermit), Beth Curry (Elizabeth), Joanna Glushak (Frau Blucher) and Anne Horak (Inga).
The company will also include: Preston Truman Boyd, Stephen Carrasco, Jennifer Lee Crowl, James Gray, Shauna Hoskin, Matthew Brandon Hutchens, Kristin Marie Johnson, Sara Lin Johnson, Melina Kalomas, Amanda Kloots-Larsen, Brittany Marcin, Christopher Ryan, Lara Seibert, Geo Serry, Jennifer Smith, Matthew Vargo and Eric Walck.
Young Frankenstein features a book by three-time Tony Award winner Mel Brooks and three-time Tony Award winner Thomas Meehan and music and lyrics by Brooks. Young Frankenstein is directed and choreographed by five-time Tony Award winner Susan Stroman. Musical supervision is by Glen Kelly.
Based on the Oscar-nominated smash hit 1974 film, Young Frankenstein is the wickedly inspired re-imagining of the Mary Shelley classic from the comic genius of Mel Brooks. When Frederick Frankenstein, an esteemed New York brain surgeon and professor, inherits a castle and laboratory in Transylvania from his grandfather, deranged genius Victor Von Frankenstein, he faces a dilemma. Does he continue to run from his family's tortured past or does he stay in Transylvania to carry on his grandfather's mad experiments reanimating the dead and, in the process, fall in love with his sexy lab assistant Inga?
Unfolding in the forbidding Castle Frankenstein and the foggy moors of Transylvania Heights, the show's raucous score includes "The Transylvania Mania," "He Vas My Boyfriend" and the unforgettable treatment of Irving Berlin's "Puttin' On the Ritz."
Released in 1974 to unanimous critical acclaim, the film received two Academy Award nominations, including one for Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder's script, also nominated for a Writer's Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Young Frankenstein was also the recipient of the two highest honors accorded films of science fiction: winning The Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and The Nebula Award, given by The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, for Best Dramatic Writing. Since its release, the film has become part of the national consciousness: in 2000, it was selected as #13 on AFI's 100 Funniest American Movies of All Time and in 2003, Young Frankenstein was chosen for preservation in the Library of Congress National Film Registry.
The production team includes three Tony Award winning designers of The Producers: three-time Tony Award winning set designer Robin Wagner, four-time Tony Award winning costume designer William Ivey Long and Tony Award winning lighting designer Peter Kaczorowski. Jonathan Deans is the sound designer.
