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The
Producers (Theatre Royal, Drury Lane)
London
has certainly seen its share of spectacularly misfiring musicals
in the last couple of months, from an Oscar Wilde musical that opened
and closed on the same fateful night to the nine-night run of Murderous
Instincts.
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This
is a musical that pokes fun at Nazis, old ladies, gay men and
Swedes with equal and reckless comic abandon..." |
So
it's ironic that the capital's latest smash-hit musical should be
an ode to the producing of flop shows.
In
The Producers, a fabled theatre producer, Max Bialystock,
and his accountant accomplice Leo Bloom hatch a plan to state a
monster flop and pocket the residual investment. But it backfires
spectacularly
and turns into a massive hit instead,
even though it's a tasteless salute to Hitler and the Nazi Party.
Of course it's not just musicals that have a happy ending 聳
life does, too, sometimes, and Richard Dreyfuss' sudden exit has
meant that London has the chance to see Nathan Lane, who created
the role of Bialystock in the Broadway production in 2001.
sweetly
vulnerable
Lane's
boundless comic and musical energy has already become the stuff
of theatrical legend.
But
the real treat and surprise of this production is that he is ideally
partnered by Brtain's own Lee Evans 聳 with whom he co-starred
in the 1997 film Mouse Hunt 聳 who makes a sweetly vulnerable,
hilariously funny Bloom.
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Musical
star Leigh Zimmerman is part of the West End cast
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Then
there's Leigh Zimmerman, impossibly tall and improbably funny as
Swedish model Ulla; Conleth Hill as the ridiculously (but hilariously)
camp director Roger DeBris and James Dreyfus as his irrepressible
assistant Carmen Ghia; and Nicolas Colicos as the German playwright
and Hitler apologist Franz Liebkind.
There isn't a false note in the casting anywhere in a musical that
pokes fun at Nazis, old ladies, gay men and Swedes with equal and
reckless comic abandon.
Though
Jerry Springer 聳 the Opera may have stolen a march on
this show in the tastelessness stakes (and has a far superior score),
The Producers contains easily the most uninhibited fun of
any musical in London right now.
More on The Producers here>>
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