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: Young Frankenstein

Mel Brooks' musical adaptation of his own classic film The Producers was a Broadway and West End smash hit, so it was no surprise that the same creative team would try to follow it up. But giving Young Frankenstein the same treatment resulted in an overblown flop, which is why it's taken a decade to cross the Atlantic. But in that time Brooks has continued to work on it, and although I don't have anything to compare it to the version that director/choreographer Susan Stroman has brought to London is, although problematic, hugely entertaining and crowd-pleasing. If one of the criticisms of the 2007 production was that it was too much of a big-budget juggernaut, that's been amended: Although there's a large cast with a vast amount of costume changes (designed by William Ivey Long,) Beowulf Boritt's set tends for a more old-fashioned look with curtain backdrops, and the whole show has a music-hall feel.