Mel Brooks Talks to Baltimore Sun About 'Young Frankenstein'

Renowned filmmaker and producer Mel Brooks is not about to let critics' unfavorable views of the New York Production's staging of 'Young Frankenstein' spoil his mood; "The second child is always shunned," he says in an interview with the Baltimore Sun, where the national tour of 'Young Frankenstein' is currently playing through January 24, "I think it's the best score I've ever written. It's twice as good as 'The Producers.' If I'd done 'Young Frankenstein' first, I would have gotten the 12 Tonys for that. But it had to follow 'The Producers.'"

In the interview, Brooks discusses a critical element of his work, which is always cleverly infused in his storytelling, "Whether my characters are cavemen or sophisticates, my stories are always about the human condition," he says. "I just talk about how people behave. The whole ballgame is ideas - how they're couched in language, and how they're performed."

And while his list of artistic accomplishments is as extensive as it is impressive, choreographer, and frequent collaborator, Susan Stroman says that Brooks has a special affinity towards the stage. "Of all the things that Mel has accomplished, writing a Broadway musical has been the most fulfilling for him," says Stroman. "He loves hearing an audience react instantly to his work. There is nothing more fun than being with Mel in the theater. He sparkles. He shines. It makes him so happy to make people laugh."

To read the rest of the interview in the Baltimore Sun, please click here.

The national tour of 'Young Frankenstein' is currently running through January 24 at the Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore. For tickets and more information, please call the Box Office: 410-752-1200.

Young Frankenstein was named Best Broadway Musical in 2008 by the Outer Critics Circle and won five Broadway.com Audience Awards, including Favorite New Broadway Musical. Based on the Oscar-nominated smash hit 1974 film, it 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?

 

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