Review: CFTA's YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN Will Have You Laughing All The Way Home

Patrick Kramer's commanding performance as Frederick Frankenstein (that's "FRONKENsteen" for the uninitiated) in the Center for the Arts' production of Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein is reason enough to buy a ticket (if you're lucky enough to score one - shows are playing to capacity crowds in Murfreesboro, so make your reservations yesterday), but director Renee Robinson and musical director Stephen Burnette very adroitly surround him with such strong support that the entire ensemble of Transylvanian thespians is worth the price of admission.

Young Frankenstein - Brooks' musical theater treatment of his wildly successful and much beloved 1974 film of the same name that starred Gene Wilder, Teri Garr, Madeline Kahn, Marty Feldman, Cloris Leachman and Peter Boyle - won't change the world or play some edifying role in your life, but why the hell should it? It's frivolous fun: an engaging take on a centuries-old tale (it is based, after all, on Mary Shelley's chilling novel that's subtitled "The Modern Prometheus") about a young scientist's efforts to reanimate life in a creature assembled from a pile of sundry body parts (oh, sweet mystery of life - some of those assorted organs are greater than the sum of their parts) and an extra brain found lying around in a dark and cavernous castle cum laboratory.

But what may frighten and alarm in other treatments of Shelley's tale only serves to delight and entertain in Brooks' fanciful, madcap version of the story in which the 1930s era Frederick, the scion of the Frankenstein family, leaves his job at New York's best teaching hospital to journey back to eastern Europe to claim his inheritance after the not-so-untimely demise (let's face it, the old guy had to be at least 172-and-a-half years old) of his grandfather, the widely vilified and pretty much universally scorned Victor Frankenstein, whose medical experiments and patently evil machinations have left the whole neighborhood in a stew of innuendo and wild-eyed speculation.

As expected, particularly if you are a fan of the now-42-year-old film (pardon me, gentle readers, as I take a nap after that realization), the resulting musical is filled with all manner of bad puns, double entendres and sexual situations fraught with such outlandish behavior that you'll be guffawing like nobody's business (which, interestingly, really is nobody's business at your workplace, the Kroger down the street, or at your hometown church, as you're advised during the pre-curtain speech delivered by Frau Blucher herself)!

Brooks' tunes for Young Frankenstein are largely unmemorable, truth be told, but they manage to advance the story in their own, offbeat (cynical, sardonic and downright funny) way, and are diverting enough to set your feet a-tapping and your funny bone a-tingling (you'd best learn the difference between that and the warning signs of a heart attack...the more you know and all that) and, if you give yourself over to a complete suspension of disbelief and just wallow in the wild and woolly journey through the unlikely vista created by this horror/science fictional/romantic comedy that Robinson, Kramer and company take you on you'll leave 110 College Street feeling ever-so-gleefully buoyant. (Another nap may now be on the agenda for both you and me after that extraordinarily long run-on sentence masquerading as a paragraph.)

The show's best musical number - "Puttin' On the Ritz" - comes from the altogether immense and unparalleled canon of American tunesmith Irving Berlin and the master's work is given the full Busby Berkeley-inspired treatment by choreographer Julie Wilcox and her fresh-faced ensemble of mostly young performers and it captures the zany flavor of Brooks' film despite the limitations of time and space and the widely varying capabilities of her dancers.

Robinson directs the piece at a fast clip, keeping the play's action moving along at a cinematic pace (for the most part) and she very intelligently uses her own imagination to spark the audience's to fill in any gaps of storyline and design. For example, recreating the Transylvanian countryside is difficult considering the physical limitations and confines of the CFTA stage, but Robinson stages the scenes in such a way that you will naturally assume those are real horses pulling a ramshackle cart up the mountainous trail to the Frankenstein place (oops, we're confusing our shows here - no horses, werewolves or transsexuals were injured in the making of this stage musical) and secret passageways really do exist in the old Linebaugh library.

Kramer's performance as the musical's central character requires a super-human effort - he is onstage virtually the entire two-and-a-half hours of mayhem and histrionics - and he delivers the goods, performing the role that could have been written specifically for his own special skill set. His comic timing is as good as his voice, resulting in a performance that is startling, if not at all surprising: His resume is dotted with such roles that he seemed destined to play the virginal Frederick.

Robinson surrounds Kramer with a bevy of local actors who seem to be having the times of their lives portraying the iconic characters created by Shelley (whose husband was the randy poet Percy Bysshe Shelley) and given the comic genius treatment by the erudite and off-kilter Brooks (whose wife was the stunning - and stunningly funny - Anne Bancroft). John Frost Jr. is perfectly cast as Frederick's loyal major domo Igor (pronounced "Eye-gor" for you neophytes), delivering a no-holds-bar performance that is somehow fresh and unexpected. His sister(!) Alexius Frost plays the bold, brassy and bawdy Frau Blucher with an equally impressive range of abilities, thrilling the audience with her performance of "He Vas My Boyfriend" that left the people in the stalls howling in deferential awe.

Emily Davis is sweetly appealing as Frederick's comely assistant Inga (her "Roll in the Hay" is one of the show's highlights, staged with verve and over-the-top energy by Robinson and Wilcox) and Haley Ray takes on the role of the good doctor's frigidly off-putting New York fiancée Elizabeth Benning (the role created by the ethereal Madeline Kahn in the movie) with a sense of comic abandon. As Frederick's menacing monster with a heart of fool's gold, Kevin Compton is charmingly inept and funny as all get-out, playing every scene with the same gravitas as he would a Shakespearean tragedy, which is leavened by a lightness that ensures he lands every joke, both unspoken or garbled in the creature's hilarious manner.

Gregory Ray (as the blind hermit) stands out in the crowd of Robinson's large ensemble, as do Jack Teal as Inspector Kemp (the wooden gendarme...see what I did there?) and Gary Davis as the ghostly apparition of Victor Frankenstein (who appears, as if in a dream, to urge Frederick to join "The Family Business"). Perhaps most noteworthy about this particular ensemble is their commitment and focus, each member seems to be completely engaged in the tale they are telling, their bright, shiny faces betraying just how much fun they are actually having onstage.

• Young Frankenstein. Book by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan. Music and Lyrics by Mel Brooks. Directed by Renee Robinson. Musical direction by Stephen Burnette. Choreography by Julie Wilcox. Presented by the Center for the Arts, Murfreesboro. Playing through October 30. For details, go to www.boroarts.org. Running time: 2 and one-half hours (with a 15-minute intermission).

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