Transylvania Mania

The big green behemoth known as Young Frankenstein staggers onto Broadway today with more then just angry torch-weilding villagers to contend with; mixed reviews dogged the new screen-to-stage tuner in its Seattle try-outs, and it has some big shoes to fill following the record-setting Tony wins for its predecessor, The Producers.

Like that show, Frankenstein is based on the classic Mel Brooks movie comedy (could Blazing Saddles: The Musical be far behind?); Brooks has not only returned to write the score and co-write the book (based on his Oscar-nominated screenplay), he has also enlisted just about all of his Producers team to try to catch that Broadway magic yet again, including director/ choreographer Susan Stroman, co-librettist Thomas Meehan and star Roger Bart. To add even more drama, Bart was recently sidelined with a back injury during previews, but has since returned as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein ("steen", not "stine"), the role played by Gene Wilder in the original movie.

Rounding out the cast is such stage faves as Sutton Foster and Megan Mullally as the good doctor's dueling love interests, Andrea Martin as Frau Blücher (insert "horse whinny" sound effect here) and Shuler Hensley as The Monster. All but Mullally are Tony winners, so again, expectations are as high as the towers of the Frankenstein family castle in the old homeland of Transylvania.

The Young Frankenstein original cast recording will be released December 26, and you can pre-order it right here, right nowfrom Amazon.com.

Links via Playbill.com, Newsweek.com and Imdb.com.