Theatre review: The Producers

The last show I was able to reschedule from my most recent bout of Covid is the Menier Chocolate Factory's revival of The Producers, now settling into a West End run. I was a fan of Mel Brooks' film long before Brooks (book, music and lyrics) and Thomas Meehan (book) adapted it into a musical, saw the original West End production and have listened to the songs many times over the years, so this was one of those cases where I was looking to see if Patrick Marber's production would do something new with a show I was already very familiar with. In the end Marber doesn't attempt any kind of reinvention but offers up a solid version that hits all the classic comic notes. Max Bialystock (Andy Nyman) is a Broadway producer who was once, he insists, a success, but in recent years his career has consisted entirely of him acting as an unlikely gigolo to wealthy old ladies, who fund his invariably disastrous shows.

When his new accountant Leo Bloom (understudy Olly Christopher) theorises that an unscrupulous producer could scam millions by deliberately producing a flop, Max points out that he is exactly that kind of unscrupulous producer and sets about putting together the worst, most offensive show he can imagine.

The original film dates from 1967, and this musical adaptation from 2001, and there's certainly some aspects of it that feel creaky: There's a very fine line being trodden with the flamboyant gay characters of director Roger DeBris (Trevor Ashley) and his "common-law assistant" Carmen Ghia (Raj Ghatak) that Brooks only gets away with because he has such an innate sense of camp himself, and which Marber pushes to daft extremes with the likes of a well-hung statue that keeps popping up in inappropriate places.

Even shakier ground is the attitude to Swedish bombshell Ulla (Joanna Woodward,) who Max first catcalls from a window and then spends the rest of the show objectifying like a cartoon wolf with his eyes popping out. The main reason it can get away with all this of course is that The Producers is the original, deliberately bad-taste musical, built around the characters staging a revisionist history of the Second World War called Springtime for Hitler. The show-within-a-show's title number, sung by a Storm Trooper (Alex Lodge,) with goose-stepping choreography by Lorin Latarro and preposterous designs by Scott Pask (set) and Paul Farnsworth (costumes,) remains the jaw-dropping highlight of the evening.

It's helped by the ludicours figure of playwright Franz Liebkind, who stomps around in a helmet and lederhosen and is as obsessed with pigeons as he is with Adolf Elizabeth Hitler (whose night-time warm milk he used to serve him.) Harry Morrison tends to steal every scene he's in.

But the biggest reason Marber's production can still get away with all this in 2025 might be Andy Nyman - Max is pretty unforgivable in his actions and attitudes, but Nyman gives him such a sympathetically dishevelled portrayal, hangdog mixed with lost little boy, that he can spend the evening leering at Ulla and somehow be instantly forgiven. Not that he doesn't nail the powerhouse moments, most notably Max's big, frantic solo "Betrayed." He helps Marber stage the show pretty much as written, although I did notice some of the ableism has been mercifully cut - "And to trip the light fantastic we chose dancers who were drastic" makes no sense whatsoever, but is still better than what was originally there.

Revisiting the show 20 years later it does feel overstuffed and overplotted - the whole number "You Never Say 'Good Luck' on Opening Night" feels like an unnecessarily convoluted way of getting Roger to play Hitler, when the narcissistic director could have just given himself the lead from the start. But I think a lot of my being picky is down to me being a bit too familiar with the jokes for them to completely make me ignore everything else that's going on: To new eyes the outrageousness of the premise were still clearly a hit, and even to more jaded ones most of them still hit the spot.

The Producers by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan, based on the film by Mel Brooks, is booking until the 19th of September at the Garrick Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.