The Producers - Review

Garrick Theatre, London

*****

Music and lyrics by Mel Brooks
Book by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan

Directed by Patrick Marber

Richard Kind and the company of The Producers

It seems almost impossible to believe that The Producers came out as a film in 1967, nearly 60 years ago. It remains a comedic masterpiece written by surely one of the greatest comics of all time, the legendary Mel Brooks, himself now a sprightly 99 years old. To many, turning the film into a stage musical was akin to drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa. Why attempt to improve perfection? In 2001 they achieved the impossible, turning a brilliant film into an equally brilliant and hilarious musical.

The plot is simple. It seems that there is more money to be made in producing a guaranteed failure on Broadway than a hit show, so Bialystock and his naïve accountant partner Leopold Bloom, set out to create a guaranteed disaster and pocket $2 million. 

After a highly successful run at the Menier Chocolate Factory, the show transferred to London's Garrick Theatre. Andy Nyman, who opened at the Menier as Bialystock is taking a brief sabbatical and has handed his cardboard belt to Broadway actor Richard Kind. Kind's on-stage energy levels are never dialled to less than eleven, and he has the comedic ability to earn a round of applause with just a look or a simple, subtle gesture. He inhabits the role as if it were a tailor-made suit and eeks out every single molecule of the crooked producer. He’s as crooked as a politician, but the audience loves and roots for him.

Elsewhere, this tried, tested and fabulous company continue. Marc Antolin plays the neurotic, shy accountant, Leopold Bloom, drawn into Max’s nefarious, fraudulent scheme. Antolin can sing and dance superbly, having everything one needs to be a musical star and shining in every scene. 

The rest of the cast are equally superb, wringing every last ounce of comedy gold from the simplest, even throw-away lines, turning already inspired characters into even better, funnier versions. Australian Trevor Ashley is hilarious as the hopeless director Roger Debris, and is clearly loving every on-stage moment, as is his ‘assistant’ Carmen Ghia played by Raj Ghatak. The duo bring a new dimension to camp and the result is a gem. Harry Morrison as the deranged playwright  Franz Liebkind, eats the scenery whenever he’s on stage - the laughter he induces is painful! Special mention to the pigeons scene – a terrific touch. 

The always reliable Joanna Woodward plays Ulla, the barely intelligible ‘Swedish secretary’ hired by Max and Leo, and her Monroe-esque presence illuminates the stage as does her comedy timing. 

What is communicated so clearly to the packed audience is that every member of the entire ensemble is having a blast, seemingly enjoying their roles as much we are enjoying watching them. Is this a show for the easily offended? No. But that's the point. A musical entitled "Springtime for Hitler" was shocking in 1967. Now the swinging sixties have evolved into the grim, divided, angry 2020s and in many ways, the show's message is stronger and more relevant than ever.

The Producers is an outrageously offensive, camp, rude, and irreverent musical from which no one is safe from being the butt of a joke. I loved every moment of it. One word sums it up, a word we hear less and less these days – fun. Enjoy it while it’s still legal.

Reviewed by Russ Kane

Booking to 19th September

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

The Producers - Review

Garrick Theatre, London

****

Music and lyrics by Mel Brooks
Book by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan

Directed by Patrick Marber

Andy Nyman

The two stars of this Menier Chocolate Factory revival of The Producers are Andy Nyman’s stunning take on Max Bialystock and Mel Brooks’s timeless script and libretto which, no matter how many times one may have seen the show or the movie(s), delivers gags that never grow old.

Bestriding the stage like a (diminutive) Colossus, Nyman looks the part. Capturing the impresario’s scheming slobbery, Nyman's is possibly the finest Bialystock to have played on a London stage. He nails the sharp self-deprecating irony to a tee, and what’s more he can hold a note too. Nyman’s flawless singing leads to a glorious delivery of his 11 o’clock number, Betrayed.

As Leo Bloom, the haplessly inadequate accountant sent to balance the producer’s books, Marc Antolin brings musical theatre expertise to the role but lacks an authenticity. With a performance that’s technically sound (the boy can surely sing and dance), there’s something missing in the chemistry of his improbable pairing with the monstrous Bialystock.

The show’s featured roles are all a blast of sheer theatrical hilarity. Joanna Woodward’s Ulla is every inch the blonde Swedish bombshell, Trevor Ashley’s Roger Debris is a work of camp genius, while Harry Morrison’s Nazi playwright Franz Liebling is gloriously overplayed to perfection.

Lorin Latarro’s choreography is another treat, with an array of styles from pastiche Jewish traditional through to Broadway-infused tap numbers. The economy of the show’s staging however, that may have worked cutely well and garnered the audience's sympathy in the extremely confined Menier space, seems a little understated on its transfer into the West End.

An interesting observation on the show is that both Andy Nyman and Zero Mostel (who created Max Bialystock in the first (1967) movie) have trodden similar paths en route to playing Brooks's outlandish producer. Mostel had created Tevye on Broadway in the 1964 premiere of Fiddler on the Roof, a role that Nyman was to assume (again at the Menier) nearly 60 years later. Who knows? Perhaps there is an understanding of the very essence of larger than life Jewish characterisation that an acting journey from the shtetl to the Great White Way provides? Either way, it works!

This revival of The Producers, the West End’s first in 20 years, makes for a great evening of irreverent musical comedy. Brooks’s gags are relentless, perfectly pitched, and guaranteed to offend (almost) everyone.

Booking until 21st February 2026

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

The Producers - Review

Menier Chocolate Factory, London

****

Music and lyrics by Mel Brooks
Book by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan

Directed by Patrick Marber

Andy Nyman and Marc Antolin

The Producers that has just opened at the Menier Chocolate Factory has sold out for the entirety of its 14-week run before one review has even been published! Patrick Marber directs and his helming of this revival of Mel Brooks’ comic gem, is impeccable. As musicals go The Producers is massive and to have been able to have crammed it into the Menier’s intimacy is quite an achievement. Designer Scott Pask has used the venue’s size to bring us closer to the chemistry of the relationship between scheming Broadway producer Max Bialystock and his apparently timid accountant Leo Bloom.

The show’s plot famously centres around Bialystock and Bloom’s need to create a surefire flop, so as to avoid having to pay out any returns to Bialystock’s “little old lady” angels who he has seduced and defrauded by overselling the profits of his next show many times over. The pair stumble across Franz Liebkind, a Nazi playwright whose Springtime For Hitler they seize upon as a show in the worst possible taste and guaranteed to bomb at the box office. Of course, through an over-plastering of camp and kitsch, the musical goes on to become a Broadway smash and the pair are exposed as scheming crooks.

The accomplished Andy Nyman (who played Tevye at the Menier six years ago) is Bialystock with Marc Antolin playing Bloom. Nyman masters Bialystock’s New York Jewish shtick, getting under the skin of the man’s chutzpah and irreverence. Bialystock however needs to bestride his scenes like a colossus and there is something just a touch diminutive in Nyman’s turn. His take on the monstrous producer is unlikely to be remembered as one of the greats.

It is Marber’s supporting characters, from the show-within-a-show, who really bring this production to life. Playing Broadway director Roger De Bris is Trevor Ashley who gives possibly the finest interpretation ever to this larger than life character. Equally Harry Morrison's Franz Liebkind is a treat. Joanna Woodward gamely steps up to the role of Swedish blonde Ulla, hired as the producers’ assistant and she too delivers a performance that is as fabulous as her stunning looks.

Marber’s ensemble are close to flawless with Lorin Latarro’s choreography proving to be a work of genius within the Menier’s confines. Matthew Samer’s musical direction is also a delight.

Winter may be upon us but there's no room for snowflakes at The Producers. Aside from its two protagonists who end up in Sing Sing, this is a show that takes no prisoners. And as Mel Brooks mercilessly mocks a slew of minorities, the evening makes for one big guilty pleasure. 

Runs until March 1st 2025

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

The Life - Review

Southwark Playhouse, London

*****

Music by Cy Coleman

Lyrics by Ira Gasman

Book by David Newman, Ira Gasman, and Cy Coleman

with additional material by Michael Blakemore

Directed by Michael Blakemore

Charlotte Reavey and Cornell S. John

Cy Coleman has a fine track record of taking an acerbic view of iconic American cities. With City Of Angels his score parodied a film noir view of Los Angeles - and here, with The Life, he peels back the fairytale of New York to reveal the truer uglier side of 42nd Street and Broadway that persisted throughout much of the last century.

It is hard to believe that this same city location fuelled the narrative to Frank Loesser's Guys And Dolls. Coleman and Ira Gasman pitch their show uncompromisingly on the streets around Times Square in the 1980s, when crime and sleaze were endemic to the area. But where Loesser's Joey Biltmore or Big Jule may well have been looked on as lovable rogues, The Life's villains are terrifyingly monstrous.

And yet - amongst the filth and destitution of its city setting, The Life's story, fuelled by Coleman's richly flavoured score, moves us all in depicting the fragile shoots of hope and humanity struggling to survive.

T'Shan Williams leads the show as young hooker Queen - desperate to make enough money to break away from vice and build a new life with her boyfriend Fleetwood (David Albury). We know their love is doomed from the outset - he's a drug-dependant Vietnam vet, battling PTSD and for whom Queen will always take second place to his addiction. It is Williams’portrayal of Queen's self-belief that drives the show. Her relative youth belying an ability to play a desperately damaged, vulnerable woman who's struggling to make her life work. Vocally Williams is a dream too, holding sensational notes with a range that is at times spine-tingling.

Williams is more than matched by the powerhouse that is Sharon D. Clarke. Playing Sonja, a compassionate ageing woman who's only known life as a whore, Clarke is majestic and compelling. Her duetting with Williams offers some of the finest musical theatre performance to be found, the spirituality of You Can't Get To Heaven being an electrifying glimpse into the bond of humanity that spanning the decades between them, unites the two women. Living in a world of profound ugliness, they display a dazzling inner beauty.

There's impressive womanly work on stage not just from Clarke and Williams but from a striking ensemble of street-hookers, who frequently suggested (to this reviewer at least) that if one were to take back the mink and the pearls from Loesser's Hot Box Girls, then what Coleman and Gasman have created is so much closer to a far harsher reality.

There's a cracking turn too from Joanna Woodward as the (apparently) naive Mary, straight off the bus from Duluth and quickly hustled. Woodward's Easy Money routine offering a polished glimpse into the truth of the tawdry sleaze of the strip scrub - in a routine that again defines so much more dismal honesty than the glossed over burlesque of Louise's strip routines in the closing act of Styne and Sondheim's Gypsy.

The Life shines in its diversity. Not just in a cast that is unequivocally multi-racial, but rather one which is refreshingly spread across a range of ages and body sizes that don’t conform to the conventionally clichéd tropes of beauty.

Where the show is unashamedly partisan however is in its treatment of men. By the final curtain, we've learned that every man on stage is ultimately a deceitful, exploitative scumbag.

Notwithstanding their characters' moral vacuity, the guys on stage are, to a man, outstanding actors. John Addison sets the stage as Jojo a middle ranking hustler, whose Use What You've Got defines his oleaginous duplicity. There's classy work too from Jo Servi's bartender Lacy, who in a small but critical moment defines the malicious misogyny permeating the streets. It is however Cornell S. John as Memphis, the city's prime pimp who both stuns and horrifies. John has a presence rarely encountered in Off West End theatre. With magnificent understatement he oozes an abusive, fearful force, which when played alongside his striking vocal resonance in both Don't Take Much and My Way Or The Highway, proves as chilling as it is compelling.

It's taken twenty odd years for Michael Blakemore, who directed the show's Tony-winning Broadway premier to bring it to London and his maturity and wisdom is evident in this carefully nuanced production's impact. Slick movement matched with a simple design motif of sliding parking-garage doors that slide to reveal the scenic trucks, and all staged underneath visionary projections of New York (the projection of the Hudson River's ripples is inspired), combine to create an ingenious treat.

Above the stage, Tamara Saringer conducts the first 11 piece band to play Southwark coaxing an exquisite treatment of Coleman's soaring score. Yet again, Joe Atkin-Reeve's work on the reeds is sensational - as Coleman's compositions range from ballsy brassy belting numbers to ethereal Gospel and heartbreaking ballad. 

The show marks Broadway and West End producer Catherine Schreiber's welcome arrival into leading a team of producers (co leads Amy Anzel and Matthew Chisling) on London's fringe. Together they display a commitment to production values throughout the show that rank alongside the sector’s best.

Scorchingly unmissable, The Life is one of the finest shows in town.

Runs until 29th April

Picture credit: Conrad Blakemore

Lost Boy

Charing Cross Theatre, London

***

Book, music and lyrics by Phil Willmott.
Arrangements and additional music by Mark Collins
Directed by Phil Willmott

Steven Butler

J M Barrie’s Peter Pan is currently proving the inspiration for many a new piece of theatre the most recent of which, Phil Willmott’s musical Lost Boy, has just transferred to the Charing Cross Theatre. Focusing on George Llewelyn-Davies (a stirring performance from Steven Butler), one of the real-life inspirations behind Pan and set during the First World War, Llewelyn-Davis dreams of being the boy that never grew up, poignantly considering the nightmare that his generation has to face, sent out to fight whilst on the cusp of adulthood. The audience is made aware of being taken on an “awfully big adventure” and as we begin this year that commemorates the centenary of the war’s outbreak, there is an enormous sense of foreboding as we are introduced to the story’s young boys. 

It's a brilliant concept and to begin with the 'grown up' versions of Barrie's beautifully crafted characters are entertaining, cleverly suggesting their Neverland charm. It quickly becomes apparent though that you can have too much of a good thing. Wilmott’s plotlines become too complex, finding little room for the development of the multitude of stories. 

That being said, the many subplots do provide the cast of 12 with an opportunity to showcase their talents. Joseph Taylor gives an enchanting Michael Darling, Joanna Woodward an impressively gutsy Tinkerbell and Richard James King sings, arguably the best song in the piece, 'Jungian Dream Analysis' displaying brilliant comic timing to re-inspire us at the opening of the second act. 

The music – executed brilliantly by Isaac McCullough’s on stage trio of keyboard, clarinet and cello – tries to marry together contemporary styles and sounds with Edwardian Music Hall. The two don’t integrate well but, again provide a platform for the talents in the cast and in the final moments of the show the sound of the youthful ensemble is powerfully moving.

Having just moved across London from the Finborough Theatre it’s apparent that the show has had an opportunity to grow. It’s a charming idea, with incredible potential and is a moving tribute to the lost boys of the Great War.

Runs until 15th February 2014