YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN Comes To Thousand Oaks 2/21-26

Theater League has announced The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein is coming to Thousand Oaks as part of the 2011-2012 Broadway at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Center Series. This award-winning musical hits the stage February 21-26 at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Center. Tickets start at $49, and are available online at www.theaterleague.com, all Ticketmaster outlets, the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza box office, or by calling 800.745.3000.

The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein, a new musical comedy from the creative team of the 12-time Tony Award winning smash The Producers, opened on Broadway November 8th 2007 at the Hilton Theatre and began the national tour September, 2009.

Young Frankenstein features a book by three-time Tony Award® winner Mel Brooks and three-time Tony Award winner Thomas Meehan with 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.

About the show: 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 the unforgettable treatment of Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ On the Ritz.”

Released in 1974, 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 13th 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 includes three Tony Award winning designers of The Producers: three-time Tony Award winning set designer Robin Wagner, five-time Tony Award winning costume designer William Ivey Long and Tony Award winning lighting designer Peter Kaczorowski. Jonathan Deans is the sound designer. Two other Producers alumni complete the music department: Tony-award winning orchestrator Doug Besterman and musical director Patrick Brady.

Performance Schedule for Young Frankenstein at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Center
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 8 p.m.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 8 p.m.
Thursday, February 23, 2012 8 p.m.
Friday, February 24, 2012 8 p.m.
Saturday, February 25, 2012 2 p.m. & 8 p.m.
Sunday, February 26, 2012 2 p.m. & 7 p.m.

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