Mel Brooks Talks 'YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN', Critics And Broadway To The WSJ

Comic legend Mel Brooks talks to The Wall Street Journal about the upcoming Young Frankenstein tour, its recent Broadway run and the power of critics.

Regarding the Broadway closing Brooks stated, "We could've run for another year, year-and-a-half I think, easily. But there's always that bad time, starting I think sometimes in January. And you know it's very difficult to get through January and February and some of March. But then spring comes and flowers bloom and people travel to New York again."

To read the entire article in the WSJ click here.

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?

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.