Christmas came early to Broadway this year – and guess who they stuffed in our stocking? Adolf Hitler!” So reads a review of “Springtime for Hitler”, the fictitious, good-taste-obliterating musical-within-a-musical staged towards the end of The Producers. Christmas has come early to London’s Menier Chocolate Factory, too, via a new revival of the Tony-winning 2001 musical (itself an adaptation of Mel Brooks’s seminal 1967 comedy film). The Führeris back, and he’s absolutely bringing the house down.
The premise is simple and ingenious: two showbiz no-hopers realise they can profit more from a flop than a hit, so they set out to purposely produce the worst show on Broadway. Andy Nyman is Max Bialystock, the unscrupulous hack who funds his productions by seducing randy pensioners. Marc Antolin is Leopold Bloom, the gibbering, blanket-fondling accountant who quits his office job to partner up with “Bialy”. The surefire dud they settle on is a gooey paean to Hitler’s Third Reich, written by an ursine, helmet-wearing not-so-ex-Nazi (Harry Morrison), and directed by the explosively camp Roger de Bris (Trevor Ashley).
