HK Gruber's Cabaret Frankenstein!!
We don't usually leave the concert hall laughing, but those two exclamation marks in the title Frankenstein!! are a clue that we may be in for something less than serious. The music, played by the traditional orchestra doubling on a battery of toy instruments, ranges from the deceptively tuneful to the mildly berserk, like a Looney Tune score imagined by Mozart. This is not a retelling of the Frankenstein story—the lyrics are “children's rhymes” that paint disturbingly comic scenarios of Dracula, James Bond, Superman, John Wayne, Batman, and other characters. Gruber is the speaker-singer-actor who guides us through this fantastic musical comic book for adults.