Frankenstein on Broadway
There’s a lengthy, rather negative review of Mel Brooks’s new broadway musical, “Young Frankenstein,” in today’s NYT, entitled, “Who Put the Trance in Transylvania?” I won’t paste below the whole review, but two things are worth noting: 1. the magical words in the title, i.e. a play on “trance” and “trans.” 2. The second paragraph of the review, pasted below, focuses mainly on the Ear, differentiates between the Ear and the Eye, then concludes with a reference to what we’re calling “magic words,” but what are commonly referred to as “puns.”
Even by the blaring standards of Broadway, “Young Frankenstein,” directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman, stands out for its loudness — in its ear-splitting amplification, eye-splitting visual effects and would-be side-splitting jokes. It’s as if the production had been built on the premise that its audiences would be slow on the uptake and hard of hearing, the sort of folks who would say: “That pun flew right by me. Could you repeat it a couple of times, louder?