I was fortunate to catch The Producers in the West End just in time before the show closed, and oh boy am I glad I didn’t miss it.
The production was a revival of the musical based on Mel Brook’s 1960’s comedy about two Broadway producers who come up with a scheme to put on a huge flop of a show so they can steal money raised from their backers.
The original film stars Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, and inspired the original musical production in 1998 with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick taking over the roles of Max Bialystock and Leopold Bloom. From there the show would be turned into a musical film in 2005, and I’d eventually see it in the West End in 2008 if memory serves. Well, this being almost twenty years later, it was about time that I saw it on the stage again.
Amazingly, watching this version brought back everything from the original as if I had just seen it yesterday, and I can say that the experience was both fresh and nostalgic for me.
In this production we had Andy Nyman giving a spot on Nathan Lane impression as Max. That isn’t in anyway a criticism, as having followed the show for many years, I’ve been aware that everyone who plays the role in the West End or Broadway just does the role with Lane’s voice and inflection as the basis of the character. Marc Antolin as Leo was also very good, although it did strike me that he seemed to rush through a lot of lines and at times the timing of the jokes felt off. Maybe this was because the show was so close to closing that he was just getting through them on autopilot. He was great, but my thought at times was slow down on the delivery.
The set for the show was noticeably more bare bones than when I saw it in the West End all those years ago. Having seen the musical film first, I remember being impressed at how close to the film set the set on stage was, in particular, Max’s office. Or actually, I guess the film set was very close to the stage set, as the film was based on the musical.
For this production, the office was much more bare bones, and this didn’t massively affect the proceedings, but it was here where I started to notice that there were many differences compared to the show I saw previously. One of the big gags going from the interval into the second half was that Ula had ‘tidied oop’ the office by painting every single surface of the walls, chairs, tables and objects completely white. Well, with such minimal set on this version, what there was was instead decorated with a flowery pattern. It allowed the joke to happen that she had made changes but wasn’t a patch on the original.
I also felt that the show was significantly ruder in ways than the previous version. Not that I’m complaining, but it was a notable observation. I may be remembering wrong, but I didn’t recall that Max spent a good minute blatantly schtooping one of the little old ladies known as Touch Me Hold Me in the opening scene where he meets Leo. Maybe he did and I mentally blocked the sight from my memory.
It was also notable that Roger DeBris, the very gay director character had a marble statue of a naked man who was played by a real person, who after standing with his butt cheeks out for a few minutes then turns around to reveal a massive penis at the front. This, of course, was just costume, but I don’t remember it being a thing previously. This was very funny, and by the end of the first act, in the act one finale song, the statue randomly comes on stage and starts bouncing up and down on a trampoline just so everyone can enjoy the splender of a ten inch cock wapping up and down in the air.
Harry Morrison as Franz Liebkind was very funny, although his accent was travelling about more than just Germany. Didn’t stop him being very funny and his giant Nazi pigeon played by a guy in a pigeon suit that was just a torso and wings and then just a guy’s legs and face was so stupid and funny.
The show did have a few changes which seemed to be for political correctness reasons, which I found strange considering this is the same show with the songs Keep It Gay and Springtime for Hitler in, and that the whole point of the show is that the producers are trying to put on the most offensive show imaginable. The things that stood out to me is that there was a lyric where they used to say ‘to trip the light fantastic, we picked dancers who were spastic’ which was now changed to ‘dancers who are drastic’. Also, that during the song I want to be a producer, Leo no longer pinched the butt cheeks of the beautiful girls wearing nothing but pearls, but instead pinched one on the face cheek and then they all gave an ‘ooh reaction’ without any buttocks being grabbed. In both cases, I don’t think they should have made this updates.
One change (as best I can remember it) which I did think was quite fun was that the line up of wearing beautiful girls wearing nothing but pearls normally included one purposely ugly girl who Leo doesn’t like, but in this version, the ugly girl was played by Max…for some reason. Maybe this was done as not to single a woman out as unattractive, or it could have in some way been to highlight that Max was trying to still get into Leo’s head about joining him in his scheme, but I think it was likely the former. Was still a funny reveal when Max turned around unexpectedly in that scene.
My favourite song in the show was Max’s rendition of Betrayed where at a fast pace he basically retells the entire plot of the show up to that point. Other favourites include the Guten Tag Hop Klop, We Can Do It and Keep It Gay.
In this version as soon as we have Roger DeBris take over the role of Hitler in Springtime for Hitler, he comes on stage in a flowery dress with a big swastika on the front. I don’t recall it being this way previously, and beyond his costume, the set seemed to have a lot of flowery versions of nazi symbols. This could have been a callback to the original film of the Producers where Hitler was played by a hippie character called LSD rather than played by Roger, or maybe this was just to mock Hitler in a bigger way by dialling up the camp to eleven. This culminated in his Roger full on tongue sucking one of the Nazi stormtroopers at the end of Springtime for Hitler. Outrageous stuff that certainly pushed the boundaries more than I recall from when I saw it years ago.
Ulla was good in the show, and her song If You’ve Got It Flaunt It is another fun one. In fact most of the songs in the show are lots of fun, with only It’s Opening Night and Til Him being lesser favourites of mine. They’re not bad, but just aren’t ones that I enjoy as much.
In Conclusion
I’m so glad I saw this in the West End before it closed, and would have regretted if I hadn’t seen it. I hope it goes on tour in the near future and will certainly aim to see it again there. It’s my favourite musical by far and this version did it justice and then some.
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