ART'S ALIVE!!!

You would think that, by now, I would learn not to listen to other peoples' opinions! You would think that I would NOT allow others to disuade me from attending a theatrical performance, simply by telling me how much they hated it. Why, I remember how much everyone hated THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE GOES PUBLIC. I saw that show. I liked it.. a LOT. It wasn't the best thing I ever saw. It was fun, though. It had fun songs and fun performers doing fun performances. It never claimed to be Shakespeare - it knew it was silly and tacky and it wore it, happily.

Why, I remember how much people disliked the revival of FOLLIES, declaring it to be "not glitzy enough" and "B-list' casted. I loved it. I admit that some of the Loveland sets were ugly but so what? It was FOLLIES onstage and it had great American actors singing that inimitable Sondheim score. Even the man I used to call my best friend teased me for liking it (but he, and a number of my friends, are high falutin musical theater buffs who (more often than not) cannot be pleased. Not me. I WANT to be pleased!

Why, I remember all the people who told my how AWFUL the play AIDA was. I listened and I didn't go to see it til my diva, Deborah Cox, was doing the show - and when I DID see it, it was the last performance. Turns out I loved it and would have seen it over and over.

I did NOT listen to my friends who said things like (and this is a direct quote!) "THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE is the end of musical theater as we know it." Dude, I LOVED that play and saw it three or four times.

So.

WHY did it take me so long to see YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN? I know why. I have been kind of down on the habit people have made of turning movies into musicals - though I admit that it worked for GRAND HOTEL (ah, but that was a book first) and HAIRSPRAY; it worked for THE WEDDING SINGER (some think) and it worked for DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS. It has even worked when they created stage versions of Disney cartoons (it cannot be denied that BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, THE LION KING and MARY POPPINS are successed, even if there are those who hated TARZAN and how deride THE LITTLE MERMAID). So, when I think about the trend in musicalizing popular movies (I haven't seen LEGALLY BLONDE and I may, yet -- and I will have to see CRY BABY because my friend is in it), eventually I have to set aside my pre conceived notions and man up and see the show. Not, though, when I resent the producers for charging almost five hundred dollars for a seat. I hate that. I hated it when Barbra Streisand started doing it with her concerts (opening the door for everyone else to) and I hate it when Broadway theaters do it. But hey... if people will pay those five hundred dollar prices, go to guys. This is America. Make money. Ok, let's set aside that reason for not seeing a Broadway musical, since I have loved them since I was six.... Having set aside those two reasons for not going, that leaves only one: I had heard EVERYWHERE that the play was terrible.

Guess what??!!

NOT!

Last Wednesday my friend, Josh, took me and Pat to see YF and when it was over I said "well this is VERY good!" I was amazed. I was so prepared to be underwhelmed that I was given permission to love the show, upon first viewing. How great is that! Theater that I get to go to for free -- that I end up loving! And Pat loved it too! We loved it so much that when Bobby offered us tickets to the Actor's Fund Benefit on Sunday, we took them, even though we had JUST seen the show a few days earlier! Yes. We saw the same play twice in one week. Loved it. Loved it again. Got the cd this morning off of Itunes. Will listen to it today on the subway and will love it.

I know why people don't like it. It's not high falutin enough. It's rude, it's crude, it's tacky. It's full of tit jokes, dick jokes and jokes about fornication. Um... so was the movie. People seem to want to elevate the film YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN to a level where it seems like some Frank Capra family film. It's a great film, a work of art and piece of cinematic history. It is also rude, crude, tacky and funny as hell. Every joke in the play is in the movie.. and then some. All of Mel Brook's films of his heydey were filled with the same. There is RACIAL humour in BLAZING SADDLES... racial humour delivered by a black man! The great thing about Mel Brook's work is that he never worried about offending anybody. He made the jokes so that we call ALL be equally offended... and equally entertained. He had a formula that made people consider him a genius. Now, he has developed a formula for his musicals. And it works. The style of this show is much the same as the style of THE PRODUCERS. The sets, the set ups, the songs, the direction, all of it. It is a GENRE. It WORKS. It is good old fashioned musical comedy laced with his personal touches--rude, crude, tacky humour and leg leg leggy chorus girls with big hooters and skimpy costumes. It's wonderful. Is every number a winner? No. So what? Not every musical can be RAGTIME, setting forth profundity and anthem after profundity and anthem. I don't know about the rest of the world but I don't go to the theater to have my brain taxed. It's nice to be given art that inspires the mind (I thought LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA was lovely and THE DEAD was sublime; but I'm also going to say that I wanted to strip the skin off my body while watching MARIE CHRISTINE) but it is also a great thing to go to the theater to shut your mind off and just be entertained. That isn't to say that the artists are not working equally as hard and that is clear at YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN.

Mel Brooks kept the best parts of his famous film so that those of us who are afficionados of that film can be made to feel like we are with an old friend. He and his cast pay great homage to the movie. Then, he added tuneful songs with clever rhymes and witty lyrics (also rude, crude and tacky ones!). Stro gave them fluid and fun choreography and visually festive staging (Pat calls the PUTTIN ON THE RITZ number one of the greatest he has ever seen - so does Josh; I tend to favour the ROLL IN THE HAY number). Throw in gargantuan and gorgeous sets, elegant and sophisticated costumes and ingenius performances and it's a great night at the theater (still not one I would pay four hundred fifty dollars for but I'm a struggling artist type).

And speaking of performances.

I'll do this in order of appearance.

Roger Bart. Do me. I know, I know... he's a straight dude. He is also one of the most talented people in the business. I have always liked him, personally, and always had a talent crush on him. He is good lookin, sure; but his TALENT makes him SEXY. FaLawLess. If he ever changes teams, I will be waiting.

Megan Mullally. Ok. She is a DIVA. She deserves to be a diva. I know she is a gay icon but I don't think she would be any less of a diva or icon if Karen Walker hadn't been the character to make her one. She has comic timing you can't buy, she is gorgeous, she has the BIGGEST voice, and (it has to be said) I am HYPNOTIZED by her breasts. Sorry. Hate to be crude but I think she could stay at home and send them to do the show for her. I love her.

Christopher Fitzgerald was out on Wednesday. We saw an understudy. I won't say the actor's name becaus I didn't care for his performance and I don't want to be rude and criticize him on the internet. He was aight; but not much more. Thank God Bobby asked us back and Thank God Fitzgerald was in that night and Thank God for Christopher Fitzgerald. He made it an entirely different experience. I've been a fan for awhile. Now I am a devotee. Freakin brilliant.

Sutton Foster, I have come to understand, is my favourite actress of the Broadway musical theater scene. I am, deliberately, taking Donna Murphy out of the equation because she is one of my dearest friends and has reached an iconic level of respect from people. Whether on film, tv or stage, people call Donna a genius. It is unfair for me to compare anyone to her. That distinction having been made, I want to say that Sutton Foster can do ANYTHING. I have never seen her do something that I haven't loved, absolutely. I want her to be lauded and nominated for every time she steps on a stage. I met Sutton on the street (a friend introduced us) two weeks before MILLIE opened and made her a star. She is so nice and so friendly and so normal. I would never have guessed that someone so normal could be such a star. Every move she makes excites me. She has such a way with the deadpan comedy of this character; she can pull faces so delicately that they sneak up on you and make you look at her, when it is someone else's scene - and it isn't an upstaging kind of thing; she is just doing what Inga would do. She can be gawky and clumsy and then dance like Moira Shearer. She sings like a freakin Goddess and looks like a beauty queen. WHAT GAMS. She is my fav. Nuff said.

Andrea Martin. Genius. Just genius. To break down the nuances of her performance would be to split the atom.

Shuler Hensley. How hard can it be to play a part that only grunts for most of the show? Hard. The monster has to communicate through physical and facial performance until he begins spouting Wildeian speak in the last fifteen minutes. His grimace of a smile says it all to me. The man is amazing. A MA ZING. And then it happens. In the last seven minutes he opens his mouth to sing; and God enters the room.

Now. There is this man named Fred Applegate with whose work I had been, previously, unfamiliar. He plays two different parts in the play - he does it so well that, during the curtain call, when it is revealed that he played two parts, the audience gasped! Most did not know. I will, henceforth, follow his work. He is simply wonderful. Simply. Wonderful.

Then there is this stunning cast of uber talented ensemblers that support these gorgeous actors so beautifully. I would be amazed if anyone were ever out of the show - if I were doing this play, I wouldn't even want to take a vacation. It seems like it would be a heavenly place to work.

Now. I know I am going to get flamed for these opinions by my friends who think I am an idiot without any taste or knowledge of what's good and what goes. Flame away. I know that I am on top of my game. I'm an intellectual - I read EM Forster novels and I watch David Lean movies. I can quote Zola and Fitzgerald. I am not some doofus who only watches teen sex comedies (those are good, too, by the way). I know what I'm talking about and I know how to enjoy a good piece of theater. That's YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. Good theater. In my opinion.

And in my world, that's the opinion that counts.

Please note that the photos in this story were taken from the internet and not shot by me.