Oscar nominated Bride of Frankenstein star revives cabaret act in this new play by Charlotte Booker.
October 6 - November 3, 2023 at Laurie Beechman Theatre
"In a whip-smart seventy-five minutes, Charlotte Booker flawlessly conjures the great actress and cabaret chanteuse Elsa Lanchester, embodying both her marital and career travails with abundant humor and British music hall flair. The Bride of Frankenstein is indeed alive and well!” — Doug Wright
"Like Victor Frankenstein, Charlotte Booker has raised the divine Elsa Lanchester from the dead, but gloriously alive and full of outrageous wit, intelligence and bohemian glamour... a triumph.” -- Charles Busch
"Exhilarating... a nostalgic delight due to Charlotte Booker’s immense artistry." -- Darryl Reilly, Theaterscene.org
"Booker's monster of a show is... bawdy, funny and fine." — Jeff Spevak, City Magazine (Rochester, NY)
Charlotte Booker (ABC-TV’s Hi Honey, I’m Home and Born Yesterday on Broadway) explores the fascinating life of actress Elsa Lanchester in the New York premiere of the one-woman show ELSA LANCHESTER: SHE’S ALIVE! at The Laurie Beechman Theater (inside West Bank Cafe at 407 West 42nd Street -- at Ninth Avenue, accessible from the A,C,E,N,R,V,F,1,2,3 trains at 42nd Street). It will be presented Fridays, October 6 – November 3 at 7pm. Tickets are $24 for general admission or $38 for reserved VIP seating. Please note that there is also a $25 food/drink minimum at all performances at this venue. To purchase tickets, visit www.SpinCycleNYC.com.
Elsa Lanchester, best known today as the actress who played the Bride of Frankenstein, was a twice-Oscar nominated star who went on to become a character actress in films like Mary Poppins and That Darn Cat! Off-screen, she was married to gay actor Charles Laughton. ELSA LANCHESTER: SHE’S ALIVE! recreates a bawdy cabaret/nightclub act that Lanchester toured with late in life -- including some of the original ribald songs she performed -- intermixed with backstage memories of her colorful -- and sometimes scandalous -- life.
Written and performed by Charlotte Booker, ELSA LANCHESTER: SHE’S ALIVE! features Mark Nutter at the piano.
Charlotte Booker first fell in love with Elsa Lanchester as the iconic Bride of Frankenstein on Saturday afternoon TV—but didn’t realize that the same quirky actress, decades later, played Katie Nana in Mary Poppins, Aunt Queenie in Bell, Book, and Candle, the nosey Mrs. Macdougall in That Darn Cat! But when she read Miss Lanchester’s vivid autobiography and heard that unique singing style, she knew she had to play her somewhere, somehow.
Charlotte Booker understudied Madeline Kahn in the first Broadway revival of Born Yesterday and appeared off-Broadway in Take Me Back, Leave Me Green, Fugue, Five Genocides, Deathbed, Psycho Beach Party and, and Bitch!, which she also wrote. A veteran of regional theatre, Charlotte originated roles in the world premieres of Quilters, Three Songs, Dusty and the Big Bad World, and an adaptation of Frankenstein (yes, as the bride). She has played leading roles at the Long Wharf, Williamstown, Yale Rep, Hartford Stage, The Old Globe, The Alley, Baltimore Center Stage, and Denver Center, as well as the Papermill, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Cincinnati Playhouses. Ms. Booker starred as Honey, the perfect 50’s sitcom wife, in the 90’s cult series Hi Honey, I’m Home on ABC-TV as part of its Friday night TGIF lineup. She also played Maggie Chambers in four seasons of Power, and guest-/co-starred on Bluebloods The Jim Gaffigan Show, Boardwalk Empire, Law and Order, Larry Sanders, Murphy Brown, Drew Carey, Newsradio, and Chicago Hope. Her play, The Bootheel, was a 2021 semi-finalist at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference and the Garry Marshall New Works Project. A monologue from ELSA LANCHESTER: SHE’S ALIVE! won the 2022 Alvin Epstein Solo Performance Award’s Audience Favorite; the show was subsequently developed in 2022 at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse. The play had its world premiere in September 2023 at Rochester Fringe Festival.
Since its founding in 1998, Spin Cycle has co-produced shows by artists including Joan Rivers, Anthony Rapp, Gavin Creel, Holly Woodlawn, Laura Bell Bundy, and Alec Mapa. Other producing credits include Kiki & Herb’s Obie winning Jesus Wept, The Vaudevillians starring Jinkx Monsoon, Fruma-Sarah starring Jackie Hoffman, and the World Premiere of The Donkey Show. Current and recent theater PR clients include: 21 seasons with New York International Fringe Festival, 20 seasons with The Flea Theater (including premieres by A.R Gurney, Elizabeth Swados, Will Eno, Christopher Durang, Adam Rapp, Thomas Bradshaw and Mac Wellman) and 7 years with P.S. 122 (including premieres by Spalding Gray, John Leguizamo and Eric Bogosian), the immersive hit Then She Fell, and theater companies including The Civilians, Bedlam, SITI Company, Ars Nova, New Georges, Culture Project, the cell, National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, and Theater Breaking Through Barriers. Past Rochester premieres include Alison Arngrim’s Confessions of A Prairie B.i.t.c.h, Woman Before A Glass (directed by Austin Pendleton) and Ginger Minj’s Truly Divine.