The New Mel Brooks Musical YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN Opens Tonight at Belk Theater

Mel Brooks’ musical YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, a new comedy from the creative team of the 12-time Tony Award® winning smash The Producers, will play at Blumenthal Performing Arts’ Belk Theater, March 15-20 as part of the Duke Energy Broadway Lights Series.
The show will be at Belk Theater in the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, 130 N. Tryon St.
Tickets for YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN start at $20 and can be purchased at BlumenthalArts.org, 704-372-1000 or at the box office in the Belk Theater lobby.
Discounts are available for groups of 15 or more. For info group sales: BlumenthalArts.org/Groups or 704-379-1380.
ABOUT THE SHOW
YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN features a book by three-time Tony Award® winner Mel Brooks and three-time Tony Award® winner Thomas Meehan and music and lyrics by Brooks. YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN is directed and choreographed by five-time Tony Award winner® Susan Stroman. Musical supervision is by Glen Kelly.
Christopher Ryan and Preston Truman Boyd will star respectively as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein and The Monster. The iconic roles of Igor and Frau Blucher continue to be played by Cory English (who starred in the original Broadway cast) and Joanna Glushak. They will be joined by David Benoit (Inspector Kemp/ Blind Hermit), Janine Divita (Elizabeth) and Synthia Link (Inga).
The company also includes Noah Aberlin, Purdie Baumann, Erin Wegner Brooks, Don Daniels, Billy Griffin, Allison Paige Henning, Leah Hofmann, Kristin Marie Johnson, Danielle Kelsey, Matthew Warner Kiernan, Beau Landry, Dionna Thomas Littleton, Eric Jon Mahlum, Jillian Owens, Alex Puette, Dave Schoonover, Matthew J. Vargo, Erick R.Walck and Marguerite Willbanks.
Based on the Oscar-nominated smash hit 1974 film, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN 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?
Unfolding in the forbidding Castle Frankenstein and the foggy moors of Transylvania Heights, the show’s raucous score includes “The Transylvania Mania,” “He Vas My Boyfriend” and an unforgettable treatment of Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ On the Ritz.”
Released in 1974 to unanimous critical acclaim, the film received two Academy Award® nominations, including one for Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder’s script, also nominated for a Writer’s Guild of America Award® for Best Adapted Screenplay. Young Frankenstein was also the recipient of the two highest honors accorded films of science fiction: winning The Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and The Nebula Award, given by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, for Best Dramatic Writing. Since its release, the film has become part of the national consciousness: in 2000, it was selected as #13 on AFI’s 100 Funniest American Movies of All Time and in 2003, Young Frankenstein was chosen for preservation in the Library of Congress National Film Registry.
The production team for YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN includes three Tony Award® winning designers of The Producers: three-time Tony Award winning set designer Robin Wagner, four-time Tony Award® winning costume designer William Ivey Long and Tony Award® winning lighting designer Peter Kaczorowski. Jonathan Deans is the sound designer.
YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN opened on Broadway on Nov. 8, 2007, at the Hilton Theatre and began the national tour in September 2009.
YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN is produced by The Frankel Baruch Viertel Routh Group and NETworks Presentations LLC.