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The Producers |
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Author: Book by Mel Brooks & Thomas Meehan;
Music & Lyrics by Mel Brooks
Reviewer: Michael Bracken for Theatre Reviews Limited |
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Surely Mel Brooks is the quintessential member of the Kitchen Sink School of Comedy. Throw in everything, including the kitchen sink, and see how many laughs you get. With most playwrights this would be a recipe for disaster: too many jokes would fall flat or offend. But Mel Brooks is not most playwrights. His comic sensibility as evidenced in "The Producers" is so comprehensive that the jokes that don't work are soon forgotten in the plethora of jokes that do.
  
"The Producers" is of course the staged musical comedy version of Mr. Brooks's 1968 film of the same name, which also took its jokes wherever it could find them. But film, even an outrageous farce like "the Producers," by its very nature demands some sort of realism. A musical comedy is unreal by definition, giving Mr.. Brooks even wider berth, with the generous help of director Susan Stroman, to go further over the top.
And what better material than the story of two swindling producers striving for a flop so they can pocket their investors' money? Broadway has often recycled old movies in a hunger for material that has at times seemed desperate. But "The Producers" is in a different category. It screamed out to be put on stage, and the stage version is even funnier than the movie. One only wonders why it took Mel Brooks so long to do it. But now he has done it, and he's done it with a vengeance.
Which is not to say that "The Producers" is perfect. The score (other than the signature title number of the play within the play, "Springtime for Hitler") is completely forgettable, and too many of the laughs are obvious and/or sophomoric. But the forgettable music is overshadowed by memorable production numbers, and Mel Brooks's humor has always had a large puerile component balanced by a more mature sensibility. Who else could throw out a schoolboy double entendre in one breath and quote Kafka's "Metamorphosis" in the next? Or name a major character after the protagonist of Joyce's "Ulysses?"
Mr. Brooks and his co-author Thomas Meehan are wonderfully aware that they are writing for the theatre, and Ms.Stroman exploits the play's theatricality with a very knowingly self-conscious production. She pulls out all the stops in the most lavish, intentionally overproduced numbers imaginable, punctuated by William Ivey Long's overdone costumes, her own clever choreography, broad sight gags, and witty design details. She and Brooks take the corniness of the classic production number and ratchet it up to a point where it celebrates the form while poking great fun at it. They even use "A Chorus Line," as the prototype for the casting of "Springtime for Hitler." And the "Springtime for Hitler" production number, probably the funniest part of the movie, is even more extravagant in the play. Bigger may not always be better, but it is here, and the number's extended length is not a second too long. It's the high point of the show.
And then there's Nathan Lane. God bless Nathan Lane. There is probably no one who could fill Zero Mostel's shoes as the lecherous, larcenous producer Max Bialystock. And Mr. Lane doesn't need to or try to. He brings his own special stamp to the larger-than-life Bialystock, winning our hearts and our laughs every step of the way. With his amazingly expressive face and uncanny comic timing, he adds just a hint of wide-eyed innocence to the impresario's unscrupulousness and has us rooting for him all the way to the jail.
Matthew Broderick takes a little longer to warm up to the less juicy role of Leo Bloom. At first it seems like he's stuck in his last Broadway excursion, the ill-fated "Taller than a Dwarf." But once he finds Bloom's humanity and loses his shtick, he's fine. Cady Huffman does a wonderful job as the producers' bombshell receptionist/actress, Ulla, and Brad Oscar, Gary Beach, and Roger Bart are all in good form as Springtime's playwright Franz Liebkind, its director Roger de Bris, and de Bris's live-in assistant Carmen Ghia. But the stage belongs to Mr. Lane. I wouldn't say he carries the play - "The Producers" carries itself very nicely - but when he's on stage there's an extra lift from the sheer buoyancy of his presence.
I suppose that some people could be offended by "The Producers." It is after all, a play about a play that celebrates the humanity of Hitler, and one that takes stereotypical homophobic notions from the 1950's and magnifies them tenfold for easy laughs. But the reason it didn't offend me, or apparently anyone else at the performance I saw, is that it's so offensive that it's completely inoffensive. It is the broadest of satires without a serious bone in its body, so that one is delighted to check political correctness at the door and just enjoy the ride.
It's no secret that "The Producers" is the hottest ticket to date of the new millennium, and I suppose it deserves to be. It has, after all, something for everyone, and that's what sells tickets. While I wasn't offended by the schoolboy caliber sex jokes or the gay stereotypes, I didn't find either as funny as the rest of the audience seemed to. But, as I said earlier, there is so much here that is funny that my reservations are slight when taken in context. This is a work that loves the medium it lampoons (its own) and finds every possible laugh in a very clever set of circumstances. And it is illuminated by the most luminous of Broadway stars in the person of Nathan Lane. Long may he reign.
© 2001, Michael Bracken
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Book by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan; music and lyrics by Mel Brooks; directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman; scenery designed by Robin Wagner; costumes designed by William Ivey Long; produced by Rocco Landesman, SFX Theatrical Group, The Frankel Baruch Viertel Routh Group, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, Rick Steiner, Robert F.X. Sillerman, and Mel Brooks, in association with James D. Stern/Douglas Meyer; at the St. James Theatre, 246 W. 44th Street.
WITH Nathan Lane (Max Bialystock), Matthew Broderick ( Leo Bloom), Roger Bart (Carmen Ghia), Gary Beach (Roger de Bris), Cady Huffman (Ulla), and Brad Oscar (Franz Liebkind).
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