"The Producers' at the Walnut

By now surely every theatergoer east of Islamabad knows the story of the Mel Brooks comedy, The Producers: The washed-up Broadway producer Max Bialystock conspires with a mild-mannered accountant named Leopold Bloom to put on a blockbuster show so atrocious that it will close on opening night, thereby releasing them from accountability and enabling them to abscond with their investors' cash.

Their chosen vehicle is the presumed ultimate anathema to a New York audience: a faux-Wagnerian musical glorifying Hitler even more ludicrously than the most egregious propaganda works of Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl. ("We knew we couldn't lose," the two producers sing. "Half the audience were Jews.") But despite their best efforts to fail, this nefarious scheme collapses when the audience and critics alike embrace their show as "a satiric masterpiece."

In effect, what the Marx brothers did to Il Trovatore in A Night at the Opera, Mel Brooks in The Producers does to an even more deserving target: Nazi Germany. The difference is that the Marx brothers' primary schtick involved popping the pretensions of the rich and powerful. Hitler and the Nazis, by contrast, were dead and gone when Brooks made his hilariously audacious 1968 film (also called The Producers)— and by now they've been gone so long that today's Germans are actually more pacifist and rational than we Americans are.

Kicking little old ladies

In this musical stage adaptation of the film, Brooks expands the modest ridicule that the movie heaped upon other less deserving targets, such as homosexuals, little old ladies, actors and accountants, none of whom, as far as I know, ever pushed innocent millions into gas chambers. In the process, Brooks violated the old dictum that comedy aimed at the powerless runs the risk of backfiring.

But that's precisely the appeal of The Producers: Brooks breaks the conventional rules of comedy with such glee that you can't help laughing in spite of yourself. (While watching the 1968 film, a pregnant friend of mine laughed so hard that she went into premature labor.) As with another groundbreaking film comedy of the late 1960s— Carl Reiner's classic dump on the elderly, Where's Poppa?— you must willingly suspend all judgments of taste and you'll have a terrific time.

Worth the admission price

The opening number of the Walnut's lavish current production— a busy Broadway street scene in which Bialystock, devastated by his latest flop and despised and snubbed by the passing crowds, declares, "Bialystock will be on Top again!"— is worth the price of admission alone. It's much more than the sum of its parts: a fast-paced synergistic marvel of ludicrous lyrics and rhymes, brassy music, slapstick and timing that, under Marc Robin's direction and choreography, builds layer upon layer of ridiculousness until you find yourself giggling uncontrollably. (While recalling the good old days when his chorus girls had "the biggest tits," Leo's gesticulating hands inadvertently administer a feel to a passing nun.)

Nothing else in this production rises (or should I say sinks?) quite to that level, and some of the schticks— like the insecure Leo's security blanket— run out of steam. One of my favorite scenes in the film— the auditions for the role of Hitler— gets short shrift here. On the other hand, the opening act of the show-within-the show, Springtime For Hitler, allows Brooks to expand on his film's brilliant original perception that Hitler's popularity was more a matter of show business than politics. (As his Hitler character sings, "I'm the German Ethel Merman, doncha know?")

Like Alice in Wonderland

Both the 1968 film and the 2001 Broadway show were dominated by the two title characters: Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder in the film, and Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick on stage. In the Walnut's production the roles of Max and Leo are capably handled by Ben Lipitz and Ben Dibble, but they come across less as zany characters in their own right than as Alices in Wonderland confronting a succession of far more memorable goofballs: Jeffrey Coon as the crazy Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind, Amy Bodnar as the Swedish bombshell Ulla, Jeremy Webb as the prancing director, Roger DeBris, and above all Robert McClure, who as Roger's assistant/lover Carmen Ghia steals every scene with his over-the-top mincing theatrics.

Yes, yes, it's always easy to make fun of gay drag queens. But the real target of The Producers and its manic characters is the whole Teutonic Wagnerian master-race culture promoted by der fuhrer and his cronies. Will anyone ever be able to sit through Parsifal again without thinking of Springtime For Hitler? For these and other blessings, Lord, make us truly grateful.