Company is coming together! The revolutionary new production of the Stephen Sondheim and George Furth musical has already undergone a gender change, allowing award-winning Rosalie Craig (right) to re-imagine the central role of Bobby as a woman. And now top choreographer Drew McOnie has joined the creative team.

Company is part of the inaugural season being assembled by director Marianne Elliott and producer Chris Harper for their new company, Elliott Harper Productions.

The season starts in October with Simon Stephens’s play Heisenberg, directed by Elliott. Oedipus To Antigone, directed by Yael Farber, will follow in January; while Company, directed by Elliott with musical staging by McOnie, is set to run in April for 12 weeks.

The new production of Company is undergoing a gender change to allow award-winning actress Rosalie Craig to be cast in the central role of Bobby. Top choreographer Drew McOnie (right) has also joined the team

Negotiations are ongoing for Elliott Harper to open all three productions at the Gielgud Theatre. However, that deal hasn’t yet been confirmed.

I wrote about the new Company last year, and about how Sondheim has enthusiastically agreed to re-work parts of it with Elliott.

Getting McOnie (left) on board as choreographer is a great move. He is currently directing and choreographing On The Town for the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park (it starts previews on May 19).

Company is about a group of couples who want to marry off their single friend, Bobby.

Main casting will continue as soon as Elliott has completed her work on the two-part drama Angels In America, which is currently previewing at the National Theatre.

Hadley Fraser lands a monster role in Mel's musical

Hadley Fraser will play the lead role in Mel Brooks musical Young Frankenstein, a role created by Gene Wilder in the very funny 1974 film based on Mary Shelley's classic story

Hadley Fraser has signed on to play a brain surgeon with grandfather issues in the Mel Brooks musical Young Frankenstein.

Fraser paused for a moment before declaring: ‘It’s pronounced Fron-ken-shteen!’

Gene Wilder created the role of Frederick Frankenstein, grandson of Victor, in Brooks’s very funny 1974 film based (extremely loosely) on Mary Shelley’s classic story.

Brooks also created the stage musical version, which was presented in a huge barn of a theatre on Broadway ten years ago. It was over-produced, and over-the-top, and didn’t last long at what was then known as the Hilton Theatre (it’s now the Lyric).

Mercifully, Brooks has substantially rewritten Young Frankenstein. He axed five songs, and wrote two new ones. He and director Susan Stroman ditched the overwhelming sets; and the show, which will open at the Garrick in the West End this autumn after a brief run ‘outta town’, is now being presented more as a vaudeville piece.

Fraser, who appeared in the film version of Les Miserables and was sublime opposite Tom Hiddleston in Coriolanus at the Donmar, told me Young Frankenstein had been ‘re-imagined and rewritten’.

‘It’s now a smaller and tighter operation,’ he said, ‘more suited to a theatre the size of the Garrick, where you are able to play the comedy much more and not feel alienated from it.’

From what I’ve seen, and heard, over the past 12 months, the new Young Frankenstein feels funnier and fresher than the old one.

Fraser is thinking of it as a completely new show, and is eager to determine just how mad his scientist can be.

‘That’s the struggle: to see whether Frankenstein can get out from under the weight of his name,’ said the actor, who last appeared on the musical stage in City Of Angels at the Donmar.

In fact, before he heads off to work with madcap Mel, Fraser will join forces with Josie Rourke, the Donmar’s artistic director, to write the book for a verbatim musical about scandal-hit charity Kids Company.

He won’t be appearing in it, though. He’ll stick behind the scenes, with Rourke and composer Tom Deering, when it runs at the Donmar from June 24.

In Young Frankenstein, Fraser will star with Ross Noble, Lesley Joseph, Dianne Pilkington, Summer Strallen and Patrick Clancy.

Producer Michael Harrison said the musical would have a two-week run at the Theatre Royal, Newcastle, from August 26 before immediately heading down to the Garrick, where it will run from September 28.

Watch out for...

Tanya Moodie, who will star as the judge in Terror, a play about a court case involving a hijacked plane and the pilot who shoots it down.

Ms Moodie, who played Gertrude in Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company last year, will star with Emma Fielding, John Lightbody, Forbes Masson, Ashley Zhangazha and Shanaya Rafaat in the drama, which Sean Holmes will direct at the Lyric, Hammersmith.

The play, by Ferdinand von Schirach and adapted by David Tushingham, will run from June 14.