By Emily R. Zarevich, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Dr. Frederick “Fronkensteen” is the most well-regarded and respected brain expert in the world. He’s engaged to be married to a beautiful woman. He’s got a glittering future ahead of him. But it’s all a ruse. His work doesn’t fully satisfy him, and his sexless relationship with the tantalizing but vain and elusive Elizabeth satisfies him even less. What do you do when your life is a mess like this? Talk to someone? Go to therapy? Take up yoga?
Nah. You pack a suitcase, travel to your dead grandfather’s castle in Transylvania, and, with a little encouragement from some eccentric new friends, reanimate a corpse!
Drury Lane Theatre has delivered once again with a campy, nonsensical, and goofball musical production of Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein. Directed and choreographed by Marc Richard and co-produced by Jennifer McLennan, Rick MacKenzie, and Peter Smurlick, this comedy-horror pays ample tribute to the revered source material. And its opening night couldn’t have been more well-timed: Young Frankenstein’s premiere, November 7, 2025, was the same day that film director Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein came out on Netflix. It was an epic weekend for Frankenstein!
Drury Lane’s Young Frankenstein has a lightning-striking cast. Eastman Welsford stars as Frederick, who has rejected his Frankenstein heritage in favour of a more clean-cut, harder-to-pronounce public image as Dr. Frederick Fronkensteen, brain surgeon extraordinaire. Over the course of the show, his character arc involves him accepting his bloodline and his true purpose in life: doing insane science experiments, as showcased through musical numbers like “It Could Work.” Mark Rotil is Frederick’s humpbacked companion Igor, pronounced “Eye-gor,” whose comic timing and charisma make up for his touchy-feely ways and general incompetence as a lab assistant. Alix Kingston, who previously appeared in this year’s Finales at Drury Lane Theatre, plays Inga, a sultry second lab assistant and love interest hired on the basis of her looks but later appreciated for her intelligence and good nature when she shines in “Listen To Your Heart.”
Carrie Mines plays Frau Blücher, an awkward, creepy housekeeper who still holds a torch for Frederick’s deceased grandfather, Victor Frankenstein. Her song “He Vas My Boyfriend” won many cackles and (intentional) cringes from the audience at the November 8 show. And Geoffrey Mendelssohn plays an effectively scary and intimidating Frankenstein’s monster, thrown together out of a fresh corpse and an unsuitable brain that Igor fetches instead of the one his master actually asked for. The actor playing the monster seemed, at times, to be struggling a bit with the high platform shoes designed to make him seven feet tall, but he held himself upright.
Young Frankenstein combines slapstick with sex jokes, modern-day references, and meta humour to generate its own brand of Broadway silliness. The show is very much aware that it’s not meant to be serious, and that the original tale by Mary Shelley about a haunted man with an unchecked God complex has been exchanged for a snazzy comedy-of-errors with quirky romantic subplots. Welsford does a fine job of playing an unhinged, twitchy, hyper Dr. Frankenstein in the spirit of Gene Wilder’s performance in the 1974 Young Frankenstein parody film. And the rest of the cast comes together to emanate chaotic weirdness on excellent sets, which include a castle, a hermit’s cave, a nightclub, and, of course, a laboratory.
Drury Lane Theatre will be holding its first benefit performance of Young Frankenstein in support of the Burlington Symphony Orchestra on November 13, 2025, at 8:00 p.m. Its next regular performance will be on Friday, November 18, 2025, at 8:00 p.m. Tickets to all upcoming performances can be purchased on Drury Lane Theatre’s website (click here).
After the show’s over and the laboratory closes up, Drury Lane Theatre will be putting on its annual family-friendly Christmas pantomime. The storyline will be Cinderella, and tickets are available here.
