1971. The Pentagon Papers have just been released, All in the Family makes its television debut, Tom Jones’ “She’s a Lady” tops the charts and Frankenstein comes to McMaster.

Co-written by famed Canadian actor and McMaster alumnus Dave Thomas and his brother, award-winning musician Ian Thomas, who composed the score, Frankenstein made its theatrical debut at McMaster’s Robinson Theater in March of 1971.

In addition to Dave and Ian Thomas, the production involved a who’s who of Canadian comic talent including Eugene Levy and Martin Short.

Ian Thomas recently donated his archives to the McMaster Library which included the script and score of Frankenstein.

More than 40 years after Frankenstein premiered, we asked Dave and Ian Thomas to share their memories of the production:

How did you become involved with Frankenstein?

Dave: Frankenstein was a production of the McMaster Shakespearean Players (MSP), founded in 1970 by myself, Martin Short and George Brophy. At the time, there was no drama or TV department at Mac, so we approached Mac’s Student Union to fund our plays. The student reps on the council were kind of heavy-handed and said they would only fund our theatre group if we did Shakespearean plays. So we agreed and MSP was founded. Our first play was The Odd Couple, then MacBeth, and then Frankenstein.

Someone else wrote the original script for Frankenstein – I don’t remember who – and it was really bad.  Since the production was already in motion, I jumped on and did a total rewrite of the script. I’m not sure how much better I made the script, but everyone kind of just signed off on it.  I got Ian to do the music because I really didn’t know anyone else who wrote music at that time.

What was it like to work with your brother, Eugene Levy and Martin Short?

Ian: Working with Dave was fun.  He always had such a good work ethic – he began work on the story and I started banging songs out to keep up with him.

We started casting and in no time we had a fun cast of players. Dave was Dr. Frankenstein; the late Malcolm Brown was the monster. Eugene came up with his version of Igor whom he would resurrect as an SCTV character… warts and all. Marty ended up writing his own hilarious scene at the last minute as a pizza delivery boy who rose up through the stage floor in the middle of a big chorus number. Of course his big stage voice filled the room and inspired the rest of the singers to put out more. It was unadulterated fun.

Dave:  It was great fun working with Ian because we have always been great friends and collaborators from time to time.  His music was totally insane but went over very well with the cast and the audiences when the show was performed.

Marty Short, Eugene and I had been sort of a recurring trio on stage at Mac since we started MSP.  We did these and other plays together and had a lot of fun.  Marty was busy when Frankenstein started rehearsals and Eugene and I wanted him to play a part. When we finally got him to agree, the show was already cast, so we wrote in a scene where he was the Pizza Boy delivering pizza to the lab where Dr. Frankenstein was working on the Frankenstein monster with his hunchback assistant Igor (played by Eugene). Of course, as the Pizza Boy, Marty stole the scene.

What’s your favourite memory of this experience?

Ian: The big musical memory was writing the score for the little pit orchestra complete with a string section. The best moment in the show to me and the biggest fun came from Gene’s character Igor who had dreams of being a great conductor.

In one of the first big choral numbers, Dr. Frankenstein leaves him to lock up for the evening. Igor waits until he is gone, looks around then finds his music stand in its hiding spot.

He drags it, bad leg, hump and all, to the centre of the lab, reaches into his pocket and pulls out a baton, taps it on the music stand – and all the cadavers rise up from under the sheets on their gurneys. Igor then proceeds to conduct them in a big choral number with orchestra. When the number was done he taps his baton again, they all lay back down and he drags the music stand off and turns out the lights. It was hilarious and sweet. I believe he led a couple of numbers like that – it was hysterical.

Dave: We rocked out Robinson Memorial Theatre with a singing cast and a great band that Ian put together for the show. We sold out the theatre for the three nights of the run.  We were reviewed by the Hamilton Spectator – as all of our plays were – and I remember the reviewer attacked the whole cast for “overacting” and singled me out as the worst culprit.

Looking back on that experience, what would you say to your young self?

Ian: I think I was twenty and it probably showed. What can anyone say to a twenty-year-old? The show however sold out every night to the rafters and ran 7 nights until the theatre was booked for something else, so maybe I would have congratulated the kid. Another sweet moment was the wrap party at my parent’s house in Dundas. They were so supportive. We sang the whole show and then some until the wee hours.

Dave: I was 21 or 22 years old when we did that show.  I also remember that even back then, Marty and Eugene and I liked the good life and there was a very posh (and expensive) restaurant called Shakespeare’s in Hamilton where we would go and blow an entire month’s meal money on one dinner.  We went there to eat and drink as often as we could afford.

I have a strong memory of the fun I had with Ian, Eugene and Marty.  We became and have remained fast friends right to today.

Check out this slideshow to see the original playbill, score and lyrics from Frankenstein from Ian Thomas’ archives.