The Producers revival review – where did they go right?

As you watch the silver-clad stormtroopers kicking their legs high, and extending their arms, while belting out “Springtime for Hitler”, it’s hard not to ask yourself: would Mel Brooks’ The Producers ever get commissioned today?

It was shocking enough in 1967 when the big screen first encountered the big-talking Max Bialystock and his gentle sidekick Leopold Bloom as they come up with a plan to make themselves rich by putting on a musical that is absolutely guaranteed to fail. Springtime for Hitler, “a gay romp with Adolf and Eva”, is the answer – a show “certain to offend people of all creeds and religions.” When it succeeds against all odds, they are ruined. A stage musical version (which itself became a film) followed in 2001.

It hasn’t been seen in London for 20 years, and with the broadness of its caricatures and the lowness of its humour, it’s easy to see why. Yet director Patrick Marber’s new production for the Menier adds enough energy and verve to sweep away the doubts. Faced with a crazed Nazi, a camp director, a Swedish secretary, sex-obsessed old ladies, and two Jewish producers desperate enough to put on Swastika armbands, he simply turns the volume up as high as it will go and sits back to let the fun explode.

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He’s much helped by Andy Nyman who, despite clearly labouring with a heavy cold on press night, turns Bialystock into a figure of restless irony, a man who knows he’s lost his position as “King of Broadway” thanks to a succession of flops such as Funny Boy, a musical version of Hamlet, but in whom hope and vitality spring eternal. His pursuit of the little old ladies who fund his shows in return for his sexual favours makes him the butt of the joke; they are in control.

Nyman eats up the stage, singing powerfully, eyes constantly flashing towards the next main chance, his comic timing – he clasps his heart every time someone mentions money – obvious but also impeccable. As the hapless Bloom, a man never far from a panic attack which sets him sliding across the floor like a human broom, Marc Antolin exudes delicate charm and an attractive fragility. His love affair with the Swedish Ulla (Joanna Woodward, very funny) is played straight; their dance to “That Face” is a tender moment in an uproarious night.

Nyman and Antolin anchor the show while everyone else goes so far over the top that the roof is in danger of coming off. Both Harry Morrison as the Nazi-loving author of the show and Trevor Ashley as the fabulously gay director Roger de Bris are unleashed into wild excess; so is a hard-working company of energetic supporting players, encompassing everything from a waiter dressed as Christ to a chorus of dancing U-boats.

Somehow it all just about works, cramming an immense sweep into the Menier’s tiny space. Scott Pask’s simple set, with a metallic frame at the back, is endlessly versatile and full of nice touches such as the changing posters of Bialystock productions, while Paul Farnsworth’s costumes gleam and glitter under Richard Howell’s dazzling lights. The choreography by Broadway’s Lorin Latarro has real verve and dazzle.

It’s not at all subtle, but speeds along with such pleasure at its own absurdity that it’s hugely entertaining.