The New York Post's
Michael Riedel writes that
Young Frankenstein will be lurching toward Broadway next year.
The new
Mel Brooks musical, which was recently seen in an enthusiastically-received industry reading, will play an out-of-town tryout this summer before opening on Broadway on Halloween of 2007. While no theatre has been announced, Riedel (who states that current tenant
The Producers is expected to close in the spring) names the St. James as a strong possibility.
He also writes, "Stroman and Brooks hope to keep the cast for the reading together for the Broadway production." The reading starred Tony Award-winner
Kristin Chenoweth (
The Apple Tree, Wicked) as Elizabeth,
Brian D'Arcy James (
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Sweet Smell of Success) as Dr. Frankenstein,
Marc Kudisch (
The Apple Tree, See What I Wanna See) as as The Police Inspector,
Tony Award-winner Shuler Hensley (Tarzan, Oklahoma!) as Frankenstein's Monster, Tony Award-winner Sutton Foster (The Drowsy Chaperone) as Inga, Roger Bart (The Producers) as Igor, and Cloris Leachman (reprising her film role) as Frau Blucher.
The columnist previously wrote that the musical "tracks the movie pretty closely. The Irving Berlin estate has given Brooks the rights to 'Puttin' on the Ritz,'...Brooks and (Thomas) Meehan have beefed up the relationship between Dr. Frankenstein and the Monster, and they've written several parodies of scenes from the classic Boris Karloff film."
Young Frankenstein, inspired by the famed Mary Shelley novel, concerns the skeptical neurosurgeon grandson of Dr. Victor Frankenstein, who returns to Frankenstein's castle to find that the legendary monster was more than just a myth. The comedy, which was directed by Brooks with a screenplay by Brooks and Gene Wilder, starred Wilder, Peter Boyle, Madeline Kahn, Marty Feldman, Leachman, Teri Garr, Kenneth Mars and more.
