Who could have predicted that a musical tribute to Adolf Hitler would ever become a comedy hit on Broadway? Certainly not the two men behind a crafty scheme to stage a surefire flop. But then, who could have known that Mel Brooks would be able to improve on his 1967 film about these producers by reshaping it as a musical, and that it would prove such an eternal hit itself?
Still so original, and delightfully – daringly – funny, it is revived by director Patrick Marber with such vigour, sparkle and controlled wildness that it renders itself the London show of the festival season – funnier, camper and more outre than pantomime, although it pulls back from the full freight of the danger in its political satire.
Marber’s production sticks faithfully to Brooks and Thomas Meehan’s book: two producers plot to find the worst play ever written so that they can keep the proceeds they have raised from investors when it flops. Who can blame Max Bialystock (Andy Nyman) and Leo Bloom (Marc Antolin) for assuming that the musical Springtime for Hitler, written by Nazi sympathiser Franz Liebkind (Harry Morrison), will be anything other than a disaster? “It’s practically a love letter to Hitler,” says Bialystock, but disaster truly strikes when it flies on opening night.
Nyman is the perfect mix of the clown and the raddled sleaze while Antolin, as his nervy ex-accountant sidekick, is winningly jangly, and his romance with actor-cum-secretary Ulla (Joanna Woodward, stupendous voice) is pulled off cutely.
Franz is an amusing cliche in lederhosen, albeit upstaged by his pigeons, which are a chorus-line of puppets, along with one sinister bird that looks like the emblematic eagle of the Luftwaffe.
Trevor Ashley plays Roger de Bris, the ultra camp director of the Broadway show who becomes a last-minute fill-in for the part of the Führer. When he appears, complete with gold dress and chariot, the comedy reaches its hysterical pitch.
The chorus line of actors here works in ingenious ways, doubling up to play the little old ladies from whom Bialystock extracts financial investment in exchange for sex games. This multitasking ensemble give the production the sense of a big Broadway musical despite its modest cast.
Paul Farnsworth’s costumes are full of delightful surprises, getting bigger and more glittery at every turn on Scott Pask’s clever, lightbulb-framed set. Lorin Latarro’s choreography elevates the satire and adds to the show’s self-conscious theatricality. The show’s many deliberate cultural tropes and stereotypes are exaggerated to the nth-degree.
Brooks’ songs are still gorgeous in their deadpan humour and send-up of Broadway musical idiom, from the wide-eyed I Wanna Be a Producer to the hopeful We Can Do It and the deadly catchy Springtime for Hitler. The barrage of fantastically satirical lyrics keep coming too: “Don’t be stupid, be a smartie, come and join the Nazi party,” sing high-kicking stormtroopers.
But while they retain their dangerous edge, the satire as a whole is a little too leavened by larking and warmth. In the backdrop are a few roving Jews, and the occasional sound of gunshots, symbolic but slightly lost in the fun when this could have brought a drop in temperature, if the drama were less hysterical.
Yet still it is irresistible, absurd and joyful, both celebrating and sending up the power of theatre. A blast of a show.
At Menier Chocolate Factory, London, until 1 March
