Let Up by "YF"

Is "letup" the opposite of letdown? I was surprised by how much I did not hate the new Young Frankenstein musical--the stream of bad to mixed reviews had prepared me for the worst. At worst Mel Brooks' new show is mediocre; at best it's almost like fun, in a theme-parkish or time-capsule sort of way.

To give you some idea of the kind of night I had: During one of the show's many (many) forgettable, just-OK musical numbers (The Producers had a lot of those, too, folks), I was lucky enough to have a good enough seat to be mesmerized by a Polish circus poster by Jan Sawka (below), included in the set of the Transylvania train station. One takes such pleasures as one can.



UPDATE: The New Yorker has Pauline Kael's review of the 1974 movie up. Wowee, is she missed.