“The Producers” at Menier Chocolate Factory
Neil Dowden on the South Bank
15 December 2024
“Nothing succeeds like excess,” said Oscar Wilde. He might have been talking about Mel Brooks’s over-the-top, bad-taste satire The Producers – both the original 1967 film and his 2001 stage musical adaptation (though its 2005 film version was not so successful). With Brooks writing the music and lyrics, and co-writing the book with Thomas Meehan, the Broadway show won a record-breaking 12 Tonys – and the musical has since been produced around the world. After opening in the West End in 2004 the show ran for over two years. And this first major London revival at the Menier Chocolate Factory is excessively good.
Andy Nyman and Marc Antolin.
Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.
The humour of Brooks (now 98) is not known for its subtlety – and that’s an understatement. The Producers takes the proverbial out of show business – in particular Broadway theatre – using the classic show-within-a-show format, as well as ridiculing Nazis and including stereotypical characterization of Jews (Brooks coming from a New York Jewish background himself), homosexual men, and, er, Swedish women. As its tagline boasts, the show is an “equal opportunity offender!” as it treats all and sundry with irreverent glee. In Patrick Marber’s free-wheeling, inventive production it’s impossible not to be carried along on its wave of anarchic comedy.
Theatre producer Max Bialystock (once known as “King of Broadway”) is reeling from the one-night disaster of Funny Boy, a musical version of Hamlet. But after accountant (and wannabe producer) Leo Bloom gives him the idea that an over-invested show could make more money for him as a flop than a hit, he suggests they find a terrible script, hire the worst director and actors, then scarper to Rio with the profits.
They persuade ex-Nazi soldier Frank Liebkind to give them the rights to produce his script Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgarden, then arrange for failed transvestite director Roger De Bris to helm it, while also taking on an attractive Swedish aspiring actress as receptionist. With Max seducing “little old ladies” to invest $2 million in the show, what could possibly go wrong – or right?
Apparently Brooks got the idea for the con from talking to real-life Broadway producers – but of course he has milked it to the max. He may claim that satire is the best way to attack antisemitism and puncture pretension, but this burlesque’s scattergun approach sprays water all over the place. It’s also extremely funny. The catchy music leans on traditional Broadway show tunes with klezmer and Germanic folk influences, while the witty lyrics are cleverly rhymed. “Springtime for Hitler” is the most famous song of course, its joyous melody and celebratory words sharply contrasting with the historical reality.
Brooks may openly show the greedy grubbiness of the two shysters, but we are still egging them on in their enterprising efforts. And even if he has enlarged the film character of Ulla for the musical to add more of a romantic aspect to the story as she and Leo fall in love (though Max fancies her too), above all it is the bromance of Max and Leo that shines through, as especially conveyed in the surprisingly sentimental song “’Til Him”.
Marber’s production is so full throttle that at times one wonders if it is satirizing the satire – but all is done with affection for the show’s sublime silliness. “The King of Broadway” – where Max is bemoaning his sad decline with “fellow” down-and-outs – goes all-out Fiddler on the Roof-style Russian squat-dancing. “I Wanna Be a Producer” sees Leo dreaming of swirling showgirls while he and his fellow accountants tap away at their machines in the office. In “Der Guten Tag Hop-Clop” Max and Leo reluctantly roll up their trousers and join in with Franz’s hand-clapping, cheek-slapping, foot-stomping Teutonic performance, backed by the latter’s beloved swastika-winged pigeons. “Keep It Gay” has Roger and his theatrical entourage camping it up accompanied by a phallically enlarged living statue. And Ulla vamps it up in “When You Got It, Flaunt It!” which starts robotically but ends as quasi-striptease.
All the stops are pulled out for the climactic “Springtime for Hitler” number, a Zeigfield/Busby Berkeley-style extravaganza with a chorus of sieg heil saluting, jackbooted stormtroopers joined bizarrely by a life-sized Nazi pigeon and even a cavorting Christ figure, with Roger (who has replaced the broken-legged Franz) entering on a gaudy chariot as a femme Führer.
Marber (who previously directed Travesties and Habeas Corpus at the Menier) crams much innovative detail as well as physical comedy into the general mayhem. The dance routines by Broadway choreographer Lorin Latarro (including tap and Latin) are consistently entertaining. The set design by Scott Pask features an ornate stage curtain and footlights suggesting a Broadway theatre, while Paul Farnsworth has a ball with the glitzily elaborate costumes. The ten-member band (divided in two and playing above each side of the stage) make sure the performance has plenty of pizzazz.
An 18-strong cast throng the Menier stage. Andy Nyman (who got off his sickbed to make press night though you would never guess it from his committed performance) is hilarious as the homburg-hatted Max, a seedy wheeler-dealer showman who clasps his heart when he loses any money. Marc Antolin is equally brilliant as his anxious, comfort-towel-clutching partner in crime Leo who gradually loses his inhibitions. Joanna Woodward also amuses as the sultry, Scandinavian-toned Ulla, while the lederhosen-wearing, helmeted Harry Morrison gives Franz a crazed menace, and Trevor Ashley revels in sending up Roger’s flamboyant theatricality.
If Bialystock & Bloom are banking on this show being a flop they will be sorely disappointed. The Menier – which in its 20-year history has staged a string of highly successful plays and especially musicals that have often transferred to the West End and sometimes even Broadway – have another surefire hit on their hands.
