Young Frankenstein - A Full Report

Oh yeah - I forgot to mention our little Broadway trip this week.

Joe and I took the train down to the city Wednesday afternoon, which delighted me to no end, because that means 1.5 hours of knitting time! It takes me 15 minutes per row of my Secret Surprise #2, so it feels like I've been knitting it forever. But with Joe on a conference call all the way down into Grand Central, I was happily knitting away.

We had dinner at Chevy's - a chain, certainly, but not one that we have upstate. We're both always on the lookout for decent Mexican, and we knew this was a good place, since we'd eaten at one in St. Louis a few years ago. Ahhhhh, the margaritas were exxxxcellent! We walked around, people-watching and killing time before the doors opened.

Our free ticket seats were most perfect - about 16 rows back, just two seats in from the aisle of the middle of the theater. I had a very amusing lady sitting beside me - picture someone in her late forties dressing like she still wants to be in her twenties, gold bracelets dripping from her arms, full-length fox(?-I'm not good at identifying dead animal pelts) coat, big blond hair that looked almost crispy from overprocessing, black roots, claw-like, expensive fingernails, and her Sopranos-wannabe date with the exposed chest hair and Mr.T-like chains around his neck. Yeah. Gotta love New York City.

Okay - the show. It was a lot of fun. The performances were SPECTACULAR. But, really, I wouldn't recommend it if you're a big fan of the movie, and here's why:

I've always had a problem with movies-turned-stage shows. The Disney ones are fine, because - hey - they already have spontaneous singing in the movies. But when you take a well-loved, non-musical movie - a movie that whenever you mention it, people blurt out random quotes like "Walk this way" or "Roll in zee hay" - is there really a need to put it on stage? Some of the songs were clever, funny, and fit perfectly. But there were some songs that felt like...well...as if Mel Brooks just decided there should be a song HERE, even if there really wasn't anything worth singing about. Does that make sense? Some of the songs were a bit pointless and made the show seem long.

The actors were amazing. Megan Mullally has a set of pipes on her! The Igor and Frau Blucher (neeiiiiiggghh) actors were spot-on. And Roger Bart was a perfect Dr. Fronk-en-steen. Again - it was a really fun show, and a great performance. I just didn't particularly care for the structure of it. And I'm very glad I didn't spend $150 per ticket.