I decided to test Amber's willingness to accompany me to plays. After dragging her in New York to four of them in five days, I took her last night to one in Redondo Beach — a production of Young Frankenstein. I expected it to be good for two reasons…
First, it was at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, which is a beautiful theater in Redondo Beach, which is not as far from Los Angeles as it sounds. Basically it's fifteen minutes south of LAX by surface streets, twelve by freeway. It's a well-run, comfortable place with the tech facilities to do anything that can be done on Broadway. It's also located a mere 1.7 miles south of an area on Rosecrans Boulevard that has a wide array of the kind of restaurants you'd want to eat in on your way to see a play. I can't think of a building in Southern California where I'd rather see a show.
I've seen a lot of 'em there. For many years, a company called the Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities staged revivals of hit musicals there, many of them most impressive in their ability to approximate Broadway quality. That group eventually ran into legal problems, fled to other venues and now seems to have disappeared. Eventually, a company called 3-D Theatricals began presenting the same kind of musicals in the structure in Redondo Beach and the ones I've seen have been sensational. So the theater itself was one reason to go and the track record of 3-D Theatricals was the other.
The way 3-D Theatricals operates is to mount a revival and run it for a few weekends at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center and then to move it for a few more weekends to the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, which is another half-hour south of LAX. It's also not a bad place to see a show but I prefer the R.B.P.A.C. not only because it's closer to me but because I think it's just plain a better theater. Alas, 3-D Theatricals has announced that they've signed to be the exclusive presenter of musicals at the C.C.P.A. so when the current season is over, they will abandon Redondo Beach and do all their presenting wholly in Cerritos. I hope some equally-skilled operation makes use of the place they're abandoning. It's too good a theater not to have good plays in it.
The previous show we saw there was Spamalot, which they did quite well. Part of that was because they had secured the sets and costumes from either the Broadway original or one of the touring companies sent out by the Broadway original. All they had to do was — and I'm not suggesting this was easy — put real good actors into those costumes and into those sets. That, they did. It was probably darn near as good as what you would have seen in New York after the original actors were replaced.
I assumed they wouldn't be doing Young Frankenstein at all if they couldn't get the sets and costumes from Broadway and indeed they did. At least, one of the folks who runs 3-D said in a pre-curtain speech they had the original sets and costumes from Broadway. I suspect they were actually from a touring company but that's close enough. The cast they assembled was excellent. The direction was excellent — and amazing, given that the budgets on a show like this couldn't have allowed for a very long rehearsal period. What we saw last night in Redondo Beach was every bit as good as what I saw on Broadway in November of 2007. Here's a commercial made during that rehearsal period…
This is not to say it was a perfect show because Young Frankenstein — at least, as per this version of its script — is far from a perfect show. It did not do that well on Broadway. Exactly how it fared there is unknown because in a break with tradition, its producers declined to release its weekly gross figures…but clearly, they opened it expecting a much, much longer run. My reaction was that it was a fun show and that if you'd seen it in an outta-town pre-Broadway tryout, you would have said, "Hey, if they replace some of the weaker numbers and come up with a better ending, they might have a great musical here."
Interestingly, ten years later, Mel Brooks is finally trying to do that. A new production just opened in London that cuts some numbers, adds two new ones and rewrites large swatches of the book. The reviews have been pretty rosy so I'm guessing it'll get another shot at Broadway. Maybe it'll finally be the smash it wasn't ten years ago.
But getting back to what we saw last night: I don't think this was quite the same book I saw in New York. In the interim, someone — presumably Mr. Brooks and his late co-librettist Thomas Meehan — fiddled with some lines. Still, what I saw in Redondo Beach was as good as what I saw in Manhattan.
A gent named Dino Nicandros was well up to the task of playing Frederick Frankenstein. Danny Blaylock got every bit of humor and pathos it's possible to get as The Monster. And as on Broadway, the show was stolen by the lady playing Frau Blücher (horse whinny) and the fellow playing the Marty Feldman role of Igor (or Eyegore). In this case, they were Tracy Rowe Mutz and Erik Scott Romney. If I were the producer, I'd award Mr. Romney some kind of Most Valuable Player award because he not only played Igor (or Eyegore) so well but also doubled as the lead singer in "Join the Family Business," which I think is the best number in the score.
Which brings us to the question: "Hey, I live in Southern California. Can I see this show?" Well, yes but if you want to see it in Redondo Beach, you'll have to hurry. Their last performance there is a matinee that starts at 2 PM today. Then there are nine performances at the Cerritos Center commencing this Friday. Tickets and info can be found on this page. If you don't like it, blame Mel…because these people did this show about as well as it can be done, at least with that script.