@ Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 28 Mar 2015 (and touring)
It may be suddenly springtime in Edinburgh but it’s always springtime for Hitler when Mel Brooks’s musical comedy The Producers hits town. The successful 1968 movie was remade as a stage musical in 2001. I first saw it on Broadway (then starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick) where it ran for six years, giving New York audiences permission to laugh again after the 9/11 trauma, and won a slew of Tonys in the process.
This new UK tour promises to be ‘darker and funnier’ than previous outings. It’s certainly a sassy, brassy production but it’s hard to see how it could be funnier – the show has so many standout set pieces that it ought to carry a health warning. Hilarious collapse is a real possibility.
The most famous sequence is the Springtime for Hitler number with leggy showgirls in bratwurst and pretzel headdresses and chorines goose-stepping into swastika formations. It’s the high point of the show within the show. But here it looked a tad flat as if the budget just couldn’t be stretched any further.
Failing Broadway producer Max Bialystock (an unstoppable Cory English) is told by his accountant Leo Bloom (Jason Manford) that the best way to make a mint on Broadway is with an over-invested flop rather than a hit. Max has to produce a real stinker that will close on the first night so turns to a script by Neo-Nazi nincompoop Franz Liebkind (Phill Jupitus who seemed to be yearning for the safety of the Never Mind the Buzzcocks studio). Liebkind has the perfect bad-taste vehicle on the rise of Hitler. It’s guaranteed to fail.
Max gets the no-hoper director Roger De Bris (David Bedella) and his boyfriend Carmen Ghia (Louie Spence doing his now familiar butterfly-on-heat schtick) on board. And Tiffany Graves as Ulla the Swedish bimbo shakes her tush in good style. Perfectly spoofed show tunes will make you want to sing along and do jazz hands all the way home.
Director Matthew White keeps all the balls in the air. The gags, the wordplay in the song lyrics, the in-jokes at the expense of Broadway come together to make this a knickerbocker-glory-with-extra-nuts show.
It’s all a strange backhanded compliment to the Jews and gays – let alone the songwriters – who helped make musical comedy theatre what it is but the daring of the original show has gone. Maybe in 30 years, there will be a musical on Islamic State: Jihadi Brides for Jihadi Brothers or Oh What a Lovely Fatwa.