The fine line between hype and hope can be like a runaway train: once the hype has escalated into too much hope, there’s no stopping the disappointing. Previews only began last night, but already the backlash is beginning to form around Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks’ sequel to The Producers, which the latter was going to be a tough act to follow in any case. In today’s New York Post, Michael Riedel notes that after two invited dress rehearsals this week, “a decidedly mixed word-of-mouth has been floating around Shubert Alley”.
And though Riedel says it’s a small thing, he adds that is “slightly ominous nonetheless: tickets for this Saturday evening’s performance of Young Frankenstein are being sold by some brokers for less than their face value…. What was originally priced at $121.25 has now fallen to as low as $79”.
Where can I get one? [Click below to continue reading]
I am heading to New York next Thursday, and when I put in a request to the show’s press agents to get a press seat or house seat that I was willing to pay for, I was told that none were available for previews at all – so I went online and bought a balcony ticket for $50. Since the producers are marketing all their best stalls and circle seats as premium tickets at up to $450 a piece, the only seats I was being offered at the regular price in the stalls were in the second row on the extreme side, so I opted instead for the centre at the top of the house.
At least I hope I get to see the show, from whatever (disad)vantage point, before I hear too much more about what it’s like. But this week I have seen shows that have respectively benefited and suffered from the burden of expectations that have become attached to them. In the case of ENO’s Carmen, which has got almost universally critically damned, I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn’t half as bad as I feared it was going to be, but then I had suffered the Royal Festival Hall’s embarrassing attempt to reinvigorate Oscar Hammerstein’s Broadway re-write Carmen Jones this summer, so it would have been hard for it to have been much worse. In fact, though film director turned debutant opera director Sally Potter doesn’t maintain the narrative thrust, she frames it intriguingly in a succession of compellingly contemporary stage pictures that keep the characters under constantly electronic surveillance. There are some odd practical decisions to keep singers behind scrims and Perspex screens that can’t be good for the sound quality they are trying to produce, but the show feels altogether more political and radical than the South Bank’s clumsy concert-like staging.
On the other hand, the Tricycle’s production of Ron Hutchinson’s Moonlight and Magnolias has received bouquets of critical praise, including John Peter’s rave in the Sunday Times that suggested that “If this play doesn’t make it to the West End, we might as well pack it in.” What I saw last night was enjoyable enough, but not enough to roll out the West End carpet to – though that is clearly what it is hoping for. In fact the Tricycle this autumn seems to be determined to court West End possibilities – next up is the British premiere for John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, which enjoyed a long Broadway run after originally opening at off-Broadway’s Manhattan Theatre Club.
