The Producers: the new revival is "a treat"
The Menier Chocolate Factory's revival of the Mel Brooks musical is filthily funny and defiantly un-PC, says our reviewer.
Image credit: Manuel Harlan
The Menier Chocolate Factory's revival of the Mel Brooks musical is filthily funny and defiantly un-PC, says our reviewer.
The Menier Chocolate Factory's record for revising musicals is an exemplary one. Sunday in the Park With George, Little Shop of Horrors, La Cage Aux Folles, A Little Night Music, Sweet Charity, those are just some of the theatre's outstanding productions, all of which transferred to the West End.
A similar fate surely awaits the new revival of The Producers. The entire run sold out quicker than you can say 'Springtime for Hitler' (although it's always worth trying for returns) and lucky ticket-holders are in for a treat.
It's filthily funny, defiantly un-PC, bold, brash and so side-splitting you might need stitches afterwards.
The show's leading man, a dishonest and down-on-his-luck theatre producer named Max Bialystock, doesn't say 'Go big or go home' but that's exactly what Mel Brooks did when he turned his 1967 comedy into a Broadway show in 2001.
With Nathan Lane as Bialystock and Matthew Broderick as his unwitting sidekick Leo Bloom, The Producers on stage was an amped-up version of the movie, with more bad-taste jokes, more musical numbers, more stomping stormtroopers, more everything.
The very scale of the thing was part of the joke, and the show steamed across the Atlantic with its excesses and a larger-than-life Nathan Lane in tow – bringing down the house at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in 2004 with an elastically funny Lee Evans filling in for Broderick.
So how does it fare in the Chocolate Factory, which has a maximum capacity of 180 and no space for scenery to be flown in and out or a huge bevvy of chorus girls filling the stage?
It fares just fine; 12 dancing old ladies or goose-stepping Nazis are still quite a spectacle in a space as small as this one.
Why are the ensemble goose-stepping? Because Bloom has tipped off Bialystock that, through creative accounting, he could make more money from a flop than a hit, so together they put on a show called Springtime for Hitler that they hope will flail. How could it succeed?
The writer Franz Liebkind is a raging Nazi and the director Roger De Bris is a cross-dressing incompetent who vows, in one of the musical's funniest numbers, to Keep It Gay.
Nathan Lane is a tough act to follow but, despite being ill with a bad cold on press night, Andy Nyman makes Bialystock his own as a scruffy, sleazy letch and Marc Antolin is a charmingly goofy Bloom.
They're models of subtlety compared to the hilariously over-the-top likes of Harry Morrison as a cartoony Franz and the camp-as-Christmas duo of Trevor Ashley and Raj Ghatak as Roger and his hissing assistant Carmen Ghia.
Unlike the hapless producers themselves, the cast put on a glorious show that gives Brooks's musical comedy its due. Like that other 21st Century gem The Book of Mormon, it's a madcap, irreverent delight.
The Producers is at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London, until 1 March.
Saga offer
If you fancy enjoying a West End show, musical or comedy, Saga has teamed up with London Theatre Direct to offer you tickets at the best prices and with savings of up to 60%.
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