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Who said movies do not make good musicals? If I did, I take it
back. My favorite movie has opened as my favorite musical: Mel Brooks’
“The Producers.” This is a great evening in the theater,
one of those joyful creations where everything comes together, an
effect achieved only by hard work and close attention to every detail.
Susan Strohman directs and choreographs Brooks’ zany book
(with Thomas Meehan) and musical numbers. And Nathan Lane is nothing
short of brilliant as 1959 producer Max Bialystock (in a Kermit
Bloomgarten hat), while Matthew Broderick is impressive as Leo Bloom
-- no, not the James Joyce hero, but a wimp accountant who leaves
the drudgery of accountancy for the glamour of showbiz. It is Leo
who inadvertently sparks their producing partnership by suggesting
creative accounting whereby a Broadway flop (unlike a hit) can make
its producers really, really rich if they oversell investments they
will not have to repay.
Having just opened his umpteenth flop, “Funny Boy: Hamlet,
the Musical,” Max is ready to try the venture, wooing elderly
women to invest for percentages (reaching 1,000) of the show. Charmed
by Max’s promise of sex games, they hand over checks made
out to “cash,” the show’s working title. Max and
Leo search for a surefire flop, reading piles of scripts, including
Kafka’s “Metamorphoses,” and light upon one written
by neo-Nazi Franz Liebkind  called
“Springtime for Hitler.” Broadway’s worst director,
transvestite Roger De Bris, is engaged, his entourage celebrating
his acceptance with a lilting, Hollywood musical-type number, “Keep
It Gay.” Opening night disasters begin when the star, Franz,
hailed with the traditional good wish, “break a leg,”
does so. Unable to go on as Hitler, he is replaced by the director.
Unfazed, Max is even more certain than an effeminate Hitler will
insure the production’s failure.
As the show within the show unfolds with its big production number,
“Springtime for Hitler,” a tenor introduces a bevy of
Ziegfeld-like beauties parading down stairs and wearing elaborate
costumes and headdresses satirizing every German stereotype you
can think of, from pretzels to beer to the Nazi emblem, as the chorus
line of women in boots and leather jackets goose-step, singing “Springtime
for Hitler and Germany/ Winter for Poland and France.” The
high point is the appearance of a campy, dancing and singing Hitler
(that may owe something to Charlie Chaplin in “The Great Dictator.)
As Max and Leo at first gloat and then despair, the stage audience
loves it as much as the  real
audience. Ruined, Max goes to jail, Leo takes off with the money
and their sexy receptionist, as Max in the courtroom delivers his
brilliant “Betrayed” a fast-forward reprise of all the
show’s numbers. In a mercifully short denouement, Leo returns,
conscience-stricken, to defend Max. The show ends with a Shubert
Alley montage of the producing team’s successes – their
titles all parodies, like “South Passaic.”
While the book by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan follows that of
the movie and enlarges on its already hilarious production number,
“Springtime,” credit Mel Brooks with the music and lyrics
that satirize movie musicals like the lugubrious “Prisoners
of Love” (with the heroes as real prisoners) or the cheerily
optimistic “We Can Do It.” Add to these the “The
King of Broadway,” a pseudo-kletzmer and “Haben Sie
Gehoert Das Deutsche Band?” a pseudo-German folk song sung
by Franz trying out for the role of Hitler. If memory serves, Mel
Brooks performed the last-named in the film, in full, medal-decorated
uniform, contending for the role but rejected. (He does get to play
Hitler in his film “To Be or Not to Be”)
Credit director-choreographer Susan Strohman for the wit, pace,
and invention with which she shapes Mel Brooks’ comic creation
into a hit that exemplifies Broadway at its best. (St. James Theater,
246 W. 44 Street, New York, N.Y. 10036, phone 212-239-6200)
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