Theatre Trip: Young Frankenstein

YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN

Garrick Theatre
Date: 28th December (Thursday), 3:00pm
Seats: Stalls AA4-5

(With Jess!)

Yesterday, I had a day with my friend Jess. She has wanted to learn to knit for ages, and because I know how, I invited her to my place to spend the day learning and hanging and eating junk food. At almost 11am, Jess made a comment about always entering the ticket lotteries for Young Frankenstein and Hamilton - we are desperate to see both of these shows! So I went 'oh yeah', and entered the Young Frankenstein lottery which closed at 11am, at 10.59. 2 minutes later, I got the 'better luck next time' email and I thought that was typical - except that my phone rang 10 minutes later! It was the same situation as Venus in Fur - lots of people hadn't claimed the tickets, and I was the first person to answer my phone! So on the day we were already hanging out, we got to see a show we'd both been craving to see! Such amazing luck.

I had wanted to see this show for a few reasons. First was Mel Brooks' the writer, who created the Producers movie and musical, and he created the movie and then musical for this as well. It is based around Dr Frederick Frankenstein, the grandson of Victor, who inherits the castle and goes to see what he has inherited. Then shenanigans!

It also had a few actors I was excited to see perform. Dianne Pilkington had a main role - she played the original Glinda in London and was fantastic! She had a few great songs too. Summer Strallen I had seen first way back in 2008 in the Sound of Music as Maria, and she was great then too. I loved her in this show, actually, she had a great costume and sang really well even through the silly accent! The guy who played Dr Frankenstein was really good (Hadley Fraser), and Frau Blucher was pretty good too (Lesley Joseph). The stand out, though, was Ross Noble who played Igor. He was hysterical!

We also had a great technical error! When they first arrived at the castle, they made a comment about the door, and then straight away the safety curtain came down. There was an announcement 'Please stay in your seats, there will be a short delay, we are sorry for the inconvenience'. Then the Dr and Igor came out in front of the safety curtain, and they adlibbed for about 5 minutes (well, mostly Ross Noble did) about how the door is usually further to the right, and how the men in black with strange headresses (their microphones) were swearing. We could hear the drills on the stage! After a little bit, Inga (Summer Strallen) came on and said the guys had stopped swearing, and the show went on. It was so funny.

We even had pyrotechnics right in front of us! It was the funniest show I had been to in a log time - it's a great humour, but not a subtle one.

Thanks again TodayTix lotteries!!!