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.

Theatre review: Damn Yankees

The Landor reviving Damn Yankees wasn't an opportunity I was going to miss, largely because it's one of those musicals I know absolutely nothing about, but which I've always been vaguely aware of as it's such a regular pop-culture reference in US TV and film. The 1955 musical with songs by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, and book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop, is inspired by the decades-long losing streak of Washington's baseball team, the Senators, while at the other end of the league the New York Yankees seemed unbeatable. Senators fan Joe Boyd (Gary Bland) is willing to sell his soul just to see his team win the pennant, and the satanic Mr Applegate (Jonathan D Ellis) also throws in the chance for Joe to be the one to win it for them: He'll be made younger and, calling himself Joe Hardy (Alex Lodge,) will become the team's new star player.

Theatre review: See Rock City And Other Destinations

One reason I don't like star ratings is that they make it hard to go into a show without preconceptions. I haven't read any reviews of See Rock City And Other Destinations but I've seen it get five stars - unfortunately they were spread across three or four different reviews. This apparent universal dislike for the piece made me go in wanting to see something in it that everyone else hadn't, but Brad Alexander and Adam Mathias' musical doesn't make that easy. The road trip is a much-loved American narrative, but one that's notoriously hard to translate to the stage. Alexander and Mathias approach this by steering in a different direction, throwing together a number of stories in which people visit a variety of landmarks. A cast of thirteen take on these little vignettes, starting with the title story in which waitress Dodi (Nancy Sullivan) has lived all her life in a town filled with "See Rock City" signs but never contemplated going there herself until a drifter (Alex Lodge) comes to her diner.