The Producers review
Wickedly funny Mel Brooks musical is given a long overdue London revival filled with first-class performances
Dancing Nazis, swastika-marked pigeons, sex-mad elderly ladies and the campest portrayal of Hitler that has ever been seen on stage. Everything that Mel Brooks’ cheeky musical offered up when it first opened in the West End 20 years ago remains intact in Patrick Marber’s loving revival. It’s a more than welcome return for a show that is as funny as it is charming.
Failing Broadway producer Max Bialystock (Andy Nyman) is close to bowing out following flop after flop, when his hapless accountant Leo Bloom (Marc Antolin) lands on the idea of deliberately producing a stinker of a show and earning a fortune from its premature closure. The pair eventually team up to carry out the ruse, finding what they are sure will be a musical disaster in the form of a tasteless show about the Führer (Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp With Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden) in the hope of making a million dollars each. What could possibly go wrong?
Key to this show’s success has always been the partnership at its heart. The original pairing of Nathan Lane and Lee Evans in the West End was joyous, and that, happily, is also the case here. Nyman and Antolin work delightfully together, Nyman a ball of frustrated energy, Antolin on top form as his nervy, blanket-hugging sidekick. They sing and dance wonderfully, and they’re very funny, too – both the physical and verbal comedy is a genuine treat.
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The highlight, however, comes in the form of Trevor Ashley’s Roger De Bris, the director tasked with helming Springtime for Hitler, who eventually finds himself playing the Nazi leader when the musical within a musical is brought stunningly to life. Ashley’s expressions, voice and comic timing are spot on. His Judy Garland-infused Hitler is a wonder. And when he’s surrounded by the rest of the cast, with pretzels and frankfurters on top of their heads, you don’t want it to end.
Marber keeps the show whizzing along, and Lorin Latarro’s slick choreography makes brilliant use of a tight space. Scott Pask’s set design niftily and nimbly transforms from Bialystock’s offices to a Broadway theatre or prison cell, with doors sliding on and off, and a safe becoming a jail.
All in all, this is a musical that still guarantees laugh after laugh after laugh, with a genuinely brilliant score from Brooks. And at a time when fear of causing offence has never been higher, this is a show that unashamedly goes where others might not dare – and we’re thankful for it. As Brooks himself observes in the programme notes: “Comedy is always the better weapon to combat aggression”. He isn’t wrong.
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