CITY Issue 52

MONSTER’S BELLE HERE’S THE PROBLEM WITH DOING A PHOTO SHOOT She may be starring as the sexy lab assistant in Mel Brooks’ new musical ‘Young Frankenstein,‘ but behind the curtains, Sutton Foster is just a high school theater kid who made it big. By Alex Garinger (And later:) Dr. Frankenstein: For the experiment to be a success, all S T Y L I N G B Y L E I L I N LO P E Z . P H OTO A S S I S TA N T: C H A D G R I F F I T H . in the lobby of a Broadway theater: When the union guys go on break, everyone goes on break. It doesn’t matter that the shoot is with Sutton Foster, New York theater’s current leading lady. And it doesn’t matter that she’s starring in the new Mel Brooks musical, Young Frankenstein, the most-anticipated premiere of the season. At 6 p.m. sharp, when the stage hands and the lighting crew and the carpenters break for dinner, everyone in the building—including the magazine team in the lobby—must stop everything, drop everything, and go eat a couple hot dogs in Times Square for an hour. So right now it’s 5:10—T minus 50 minutes—and Foster, out early from non-stop rehearsals a few doors over on 42nd Street, is in her Hilton Theatre dressing room slipping into makeup. Upstairs, a few union guys linger, watching the photographer and his assistant make quick work converting the towering lobby into a makeshift photo studio. The space is elegant and lovely, with marble and little theatrical flourishes everywhere, quite impressive, actually— until someone knocks on an, oh, hollow pillar and explains that the whole place is about five years old. Two classic but tiny Broadway houses were torn down and sacrificed to the corporate theater gods to make room for the hefty, yet ersatz Hilton: How else are you going to fit a musical the size of Young Frankenstein? The moment Foster arrives, all that artificiality is sucked out of the room. “Hi, I’m Sutton, it’s really nice to meet you,” she says, a little Georgia-meets-Michigan inflection hidden behind her smile. Her dark hair tucked back in a ponytail, she’s camera ready in jeans and a frilly blouse we’ve provided, and up for anything. The photographer sits her on the stairs leading to the balcony seats and starts snapping, all the while keeping an eye on his watch: With 6 p.m. looming, another outfit—and a second set-up—still wait in the wings. Foster, of course, knows a thing or two about quick changes. In Young Frankenstein, which opens Nov. 8, the Tony-Award winner (and twice more nominee) stars as Inga, Dr. Frankenstein’s curvaceous, yodeling lab assistant, who goes from taking a roll in ze hay to putting ze candle back to singing and dancing with ze Transylvanians. Teri Garr originated the role in the 1974 film upon which the musical is based, and, along with Gene Wilder’s Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, and Marty Feldman’s Igor, provided at least two of Brooks’ all-time most memorable celluloid exchanges. Remember these? (The trio stand in front of the huge castle doors.) Dr. Frankenstein: What knockers. Inga: Oh, thank you doctor. of the body parts must be enlarged. Inga: His veins, his feet, his hands, his organs vould all have to be increased in size. Dr. Frankenstein: Exactly. Inga: He vould have an enormous schwanzstucker. Dr. Frankenstein: That goes without saying. Inga: Voof. Igor: He’s going to be very popular. That’s what Foster and her cast mates (including Roger Bart as Dr. Frankenstein, Megan Mullally as Elizabeth, Shuler Hensley as the Monster, Andrea Martin as Frau Brucher—iiiihhh!—and Christopher Fitzgerald as Igor), iiiihhh! iiiihhh!—and not to mention Brooks, co-book writer Thomas Meehan, and director-choreographer Susan Stroman, are all up against: that legacy of classic Brooks one-liners that most of the Hilton audience will know by heart. With The Producers, the filmmaker’s last comedy-turned-mega-musical, the adaptation was different: the characters, Max and Leo, and the concept—produce the world’s worst musical—were the stars. Here, the subject is as old as Mary Shelley, but it’s the famous jokes everyone wants to hear. “I feel like we’re toeing a really fine line,” Foster says, “because some people are going to say, ‘Oh, it’s too much like the movie,’ and then if we veer away from the movie, they’ll be like, ‘Well, they didn’t follow the movie. Or they didn’t say this line, or it’s not any good because they didn’t do the knockers joke.’ We’re screwed no matter what.” Don’t worry, they do the knockers joke. “My job and everyone’s job is to honor the film and elevate it hopefully to a new level,” she adds. Just don’t expect to leave the theater quoting the same old lines. It’s everything else, especially the sheer size and spectacle of the production, that left audiences and critics at the Seattle tryouts stunned. “If the laboratory was like this little…,” she holds her hands closely together, “it wouldn’t have the same effect. The laboratory should be like, dun, dun, dun. And it is.” At the moment, we’re talking in the back row of the empty orchestra seats, and actually, from my vantage point, the laboratory is more like DUN, DUN, DUN. “It’s epic,” Foster says. “It’s an epic tale.” The songs and choreography also don’t skimp. The title of Foster and the townspeople’s big first-act closer, “Transylvania Mania” pretty much says it all, while “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” in which a tuxedoed Dr. Frankenstein and the Monster pay homage to Irving Berlin has changed from a 15-second interlude in the movie into an utterly gleeful, unrelenting eight-minute PHOTO GRAPHY B Y A DA M A M ENG UA L CITY 67

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CITY Issue 52 Contents Letter from CITY Our Friends Action Wanted City Moment In Rogue Fit The Amused Bouche Fast Food Must Haves Hot Wheels Idol Handlers Design Public Affairs Pluck of the Draw Novel Ideas Monster's Belle Not Guilty The Understudies The Hunger Elastique Where to Buy It Socials Icon

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