photo by: Theatre Lawrence

Secily Rees as Frau Blucher and Clint Claycamp as the Frankenstein Monster are pictured during a rehearsal for Theatre Lawrence's production of the Mel Brooks musical "Young Frankenstein."

The director of Theatre Lawrence’s “Young Frankenstein” thought about staging the season opener entirely in shades of gray — gray costumes, gray set, gray props.

That would be a fitting homage to the 1974 Mel Brooks film of the same name, which was memorably shot in black and white to evoke the horror films of the 1930s that Brooks was spoofing.

But that idea was short lived. Good ideas for film, Craig Ruis Fisher understands from his many years in theater, aren’t automatically good ideas for the stage.

“It gets too hard to look at,” Fisher said, “and it’s not fun to create that way because then you’re so tied down to this one color scheme.”

Not to mention that gray-scaling the whole show might tend to dampen some of its comic vibrancy, which is what drew Fisher, whose day job is theater director at Lawrence High School, to the community theater production.

“When I went in to talk to Jamie (Ulmer, Theatre Lawrence’s executive director) and he said ‘how would you feel about (directing) this show?’ I was like, well, I love that. It’s funny. It’s spooky. It’s campy and silly.”

photo by: Theatre Lawrence

Zachary Bricken as Igor is pictured during a rehearsal for Theatre Lawrence’s production of the Mel Brooks musical “Young Frankenstein.”

photo by: Theatre Lawrence

Spencer Greenwood as Dr. Frederick von Frankenstein is pictured during a rehearsal for Theatre Lawrence’s production of the Mel Brooks musical “Young Frankenstein.”

And it’s a musical, which is where it departs from the film, although in almost every other respect it’s very faithful to the screenplay — not a surprise since Brooks also wrote the lyrics and music for the stage show, which opened in 2007.

The basic plot line is that the American descendant of the infamous Victor Frankenstein inherits the Frankenstein castle in Transylvania, travels there, discovers Victor’s laboratory and papers and decides to create his own being using lightning and corpse parts — with some madcap results. As in the 1931 horror classic starring Boris Karloff, the re-animated being has a little mishap with his brain and is not well-received by the villagers.

When Fisher describes “Young Frankenstein” as spooky he doesn’t mean the usual jump-scares of horror films. He means that it’s “moody and a little dark, and there’s some, you know, body parts that just kind of appear here and there.”

In sum, he said, “It’s meant to be a little creepy and a little kooky.”

One thing Fisher wasn’t tempted to try was to cast actors based on their resemblance to the famous faces in the movie: Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Peter Boyle and Marty Feldman, among others.

“I don’t want to cast someone because they look like Gene Wilder or because they exude a vibe of Cloris Leachman or whatever,” he said. “I want to cast the best person for the role and then kind of bring some of that out in them. And I think we’ve done that. …There’s similarities obviously — there’s things that they say and do — but I think overall we just tried to kind of pull the essence out and cast the best person who we thought would fit the roles better.”

The character made famous by Wilder, Dr. Frederick von Frankenstein (pronounced “Fronkensteen,” as he insists, to distance himself from his notorious mad-scientist ancestor) is played by Theatre Lawrence regular Spencer Greenwood, and the Leachman character, the housekeeper Frau Blucher, whose name evokes the running gag of a neighing horse, is also played by a familiar face to local theater-goers, Secily Rees. Igor, unforgettably portrayed in the movie by Feldman with his protruding eyes and ever-moving hump on his back, is played by relative newcomer Zachary Bricken. The Frankenstein monster — Boyle in the movie — is played by Clinton Claycamp, who is making his Theatre Lawrence debut.

The Igor character, as “Young Frankenstein” buffs know, is responsible for the line “Walk this way,” which is said to have inspired the hit 1975 Aerosmith song of the same name.

For those who have seen the movie but not a stage production of “Young Frankenstein,” Fisher notes that the stage version — with the music and dance numbers — “adds a lot,” which explains why Brooks revisited the work 30 years later.

“It keeps it buoyant and kind of flowing and makes some things funnier and some things play differently because of the music,” Fisher said.

“Young Frankenstein” opens Friday at Theatre Lawrence, 4660 Bauer Farm Drive, and will have multiple performances through Sept. 29. For information about tickets, call 785-843-SHOW (7469) or go online at theatrelawrence.com.