Back in 1969 Mel Brooks won an Oscar (Best Writing, Story and Screenplay) for the film The Producers, for which Gene Wilder was also nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Since Brooks turned The Producers into a stage show back in 2001 it has gone on to win a record 12 Tony Awards.
This production, currently in Bristol but also touring the UK, is peppered with some titanic performances, notably Cory English’s full-on portrayal of the deeply amoral producer Max Bialystock and David Bedella’s splendidly vain Roger de Bris. Phill Jupitus’s very solid pigeon-fancying old ‘Jerry’ Franz Liebkind got some belly laughs as did Louie Spence’s ultimately camp Carmen Ghia, while the very leggy Tiffany Graves’ Ulla impressed with high kicks and splits.
Cory English literally physically threw himself into this performance as Max. If he had any gaskets left to blow at the end of the night I’d be surprised and impressed. He finally stole the show with his tremendous reprise of the plot through song (‘Betrayed’) while perched on a loo seat. Max’s side-kick, co-producer Leo Bloom, was played by Jason Manford, just back from his third international sell-out stand-up tour. Apart from a missed final high note in ‘That Face’ he was in fine voice, although his moments with the famous blue blanket, perhaps inevitably, weren’t quite as adorably mad as portrayed by Wilder in the 1968 film version.
The only crack in Brook’s satirical masterpiece is that it is a construct from a pre-PC world. Its excuse is that it could be said to be a period piece from that old 1959 time, where women are referred to as girls, have their bottoms pinched by randy old men and are asked to ‘clean the place up’, and where gays are all OTT camp. Slightly uncomfortable laughter? As Hitler is finally played by a man he would have happily gassed, I’m possibly in danger of missing Brook’s point here. But for me this highly successful musical has accrued some awkward social atrophy – at times it seemed like the Billy Cotton Band Show had returned in the guise of Strictly Come Dancing, with long-legged dancing Betty Boop girls doing turns not unlike those scantily-clad female appendages in the Paul Daniels Show of old. And it really is just too long. Even with a break, three hours of this borders on being an ordeal – the songs at times having the effect of keeping the train in the station, ‘Till Him’ an example.
But the commitment of the entire cast was evident from the off. Like employees all facing final warnings, these guys played it like it was their last. The punchline song ‘Springtime for Hitler’ gave the proceedings the adrenaline hit the show needed to lift it away from the sordidity of Max’s machinations. And yes, even now there is something exquisitely shocking in seeing jackboot-wearing Nazis strutting about on stage, with a gold lamé-jacketed Fuhrer flashing his pearlies at us. Matthew White’s direction ensured the large crowd at the Hippodrome were on their feet to cheer home Max and Leo after jail finally reinvents the pair as impresarios of note. The show swings, but it is starting to show its age. ★★★☆☆ Simon Bishop 28/04/15
