Framed posters announcing a Hamlet musical, which closes after one night, a red plush curtain, this is penny-pinching fringe theatre for producer Max Bialystock who boasts of once being king of Broadway. Into his shabby office walks nerdish nebbish accountant Leo Bloom with his baby blue comfort blanket, come to check the creative accountancy in his books, and comes up with the idea that a flop could make more money than a hit. He wants to be a producer.
To make sure their production will be bad, they seek out the worst play, the worst performers and director. Brooks takes that idea and runs with it: a diehard Nazi, Franz Liebkind (Harry Morrison), comical in his Hitler loyalty, lederhosen and tin helmet, swastikas everywhere even on pigeon backs, the wandering Jew popping up now and then, Fiddler on the Roof down and outs, camp as hell director Roger De Bris (drag artist Trevor Ashley) and his assistant Cermen Ghia (deliciously all in black Raj Ghatak) a wonderful double act to match Andy Nyman’s Max Bialystock and Marc Antolin’s Leo Bloom sweet pairing. All are outstanding.
Bialystock goes to great lengths to wish the show good luck—bad luck to say that to actors, so break a leg it is, but Liebkind does break a leg running away from Irish-voiced police (don't ask). De Bris is persuaded to stand in for him, and this is where it gets fabulous darling. “Keep It Gay”. No joke is too corny, no routine too hammy—rich old ladies, Bialystock’s angels who adore him and give him cheques made out to Cash (funny name that), dance on Zimmer frames (could serve as portable ballet barres), better than tap shoes.
De Bris’s costume changes are swift and dazzling. Entering the stage on a chariot in gold laurel wreath and gown, he is very Nero. Later he is Hitler, Mussolini and the blackshirts in one. And we love him. We love the mockery, the piss-take of a camp dictator, which makes Liebkind angry—Hitler was butch... There’s mock Bavarian song with huge silver balloon sausages and a Brünnhilde, Christ serving champagne, Russian / Ukrainian dancing and immigrant Yiddish culture rolled into one. Where is Brooks now when we need him to take down our present day tyrants?
There is also blonde Marilyn Monroe-ish Swedish Ulla (with a name that goes on forever), who walks into the office to audition, and Bloom falls hard. Joanna Woodward is pure delight, “When You’ve Got It, Flaunt It”. A touch of another musical there—you’ll guess from the music. Nothing is sacred or not spoof-able—there’s even some Gilbert and Sullivan. The rhyming is choice.
Springtime for Hitler turns out to be a hit, a palpable “hit-ler”, reviews positive. “Is there no offence in’t? No, no, they do but jest. Poison in jest. No offence i’th’world.” (this is me lifting from Hamlet, not Brooks, sorry.) The well-read Brooks throws in hints and references, both literary (Bialystock calls Bloom Prince Myshkin, and guess where the name Bloom is taken from…) and from musical shows, from everywhere, anything goes. Keeps us on our toes.
“Where did we go right?” Even with half the audience Jewish… Eventually they land in jail, where Bialystock comes up with an idea for a jailhouse musical “Prisoner of Love”. Gotta sing in Sing Sing… There’s no stopping the man. He is as irrepressible as Brooks. A survivor.
It is fabulous, this Patrick Marber, directed at a pace, tight ship revival in the 180-seater Menier Chocolate Factory theatre. It might just be special. It’s the intimacy—the performers are almost in our laps, there are only nine rows of seats. How Marber and choreographer Lorin Latarro have managed to cram the production with its cast of eighteen (twelve the hoofers who take on many roles, not least a moving marble statue with impressive tackle) on a tiny stage is short of miraculous. It beats many a West End show.
We laugh ourselves silly. The theatre agent next to me thinks he might have developed a six-pack from laughing so much; I worry it could be a hernia… It is laugh-out-loud funny. I haven’t laughed like this for a long time. A tonic just before Christmas. Sadly the run is sold out, but do try for returns, you won’t regret it. And don’t say bah humbug.
Humour and over-the-top satire honed in his early stand-up days on the Borscht Belt, Brooks brings his irreverence and pinball machine wit to a show tumbling over itself with silliness. Two hours forty-five minutes of brilliant comedy, dodgy accents and jaunty musical numbers—what’s not to like…? Scott Pask’s economical set, Richard Howell’s lighting, Paul Farnsworth’s flamboyant costumes, a ten-strong live band discreetly in glass boxes either side above the stage and an audience eating out of the performers’ hands, now that’s the magic and camaraderie of theatre.
I could namedrop but I won’t, there are many here tonight, second press night, from the theatre world, paying homage, I hope, to a genius. Mel Brooks, born 1926, the proudly Jewish (father Polish Jew, mother Ukrainian Jew) boy from Brooklyn done good, offending just about everyone for good measure in his people-baiting 1967, now cult, film The Producers, which became a musical comedy in 2001, revived again and again, winner of numerous awards. It has found its perfect place.