The Producers returns to the London stage – and it’s as sharp and taboo-busting as ever
Christmas came early to Broadway this year – and guess who they stuffed in our stocking? Adolf Hitler!” So reads a review of “Springtime for Hitler”, the fictitious, good-taste-obliterating musical-within-a-musical staged towards the end of The Producers. Christmas has come early to London’s Menier Chocolate Factory, too, via a new revival of the Tony-winning 2001 musical (itself an adaptation of Mel Brooks’s seminal 1967 comedy film). The Führeris back, and he’s absolutely bringing the house down.
The premise is simple and ingenious: two showbiz no-hopers realise they can profit more from a flop than a hit, so they set out to purposely produce the worst show on Broadway. Andy Nyman is Max Bialystock, the unscrupulous hack who funds his productions by seducing randy pensioners. Marc Antolin is Leopold Bloom, the gibbering, blanket-fondling accountant who quits his office job to partner up with “Bialy”. The surefire dud they settle on is a gooey paean to Hitler’s Third Reich, written by an ursine, helmet-wearing not-so-ex-Nazi (Harry Morrison), and directed by the explosively camp Roger de Bris (Trevor Ashley).
What’s impressive about The Producers is just how sharp its teeth still are, nearly 60 years on. The sight of swastikas being gaily twirled around the stage still has the hard kick of taboo: as a satire both of fascist nationalism and showbiz, The Producers remains ever-relevant. Directed by Patrick Marber (Closer, Leopoldstadt), this production does a lot with a small, intimate stage; Lorin Latarro’s choreography is showy and dynamic – but lets the comedy rightfully hoard the focus.
It’s hard to resist incessant comparisons to the original, so closely does The Producers hew to it; all of the funniest lines are ripped verbatim from the 1967 screenplay. (“Hitler… there was a painter. He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon. Two coats!”) The variations are chiefly musical, the lively and bombastic songs dotted across the musical’s two acts, all written by Brooks himself – an artist who always has one foot in vaudevillian tradition.
There is variation, too, in the casting: the brilliant Nyman is far slighter than the original Bialystock Zero Mostel (and smaller too than Nathan Lane, who played him in the 2005 musical film), lending a completely different physicality to the character’s shameless, craven scheming. Antolin, meanwhile, approximates the air of Gene Wilder’s hysterical nebbish, girding it with a sort of mannered precision of his own. The supporting players are roundly excellent, from Morrison through to Joanna Woodward, who plays the preposterously accented Swedish siren Ulla.
I’m not sure anything new is achieved with this production, but then, that’s always been the case with The Producers onstage. It never needed to exist – but that doesn’t make it any less delightful. The jokes are rapid, the satire outrageous. How could it possibly fail?
‘The Producers’ runs at the Menier Chocolate Factory until 1 March 2025
