THE PRODUCERS
(five stars)
At the St. James Theater, 246 W. 44th St.; (212) 239-6200.
AS they used to say on Broadway, and in Shakespeare: “What’s the news on the Rialto?” Well, with “The Producers,” you can say everything new is old again – and frankly, that’s just terrific.
Now, for all too brief a time, that grand old firm of Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick has returned, boosting the theater box office to new heights, and inspiring ticket fever in the populace.
The unique charm of Mel Brooks’ altogether dazzling musical is that it is – or, more important, gives the impression of being, for there are cleverly deployed layers here – very much an insider’s show.
It has referential reverence for show business and the whole wide world of the Broadway musical, while taking an affectionate look back at Brooks’ cult classic movie, indelibly starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder.
Back in the saddle again are the musical’s equally indelible and quite possibly irreplaceable Lane and Broderick, as the original odd-couple producing team of Bialystock and Bloom, who scheme to make good on Broadway by making bad.
Lane and Broderick have by now forged the perfect symbiotic partnership with the comic timing of Laurel and Hardy and the artistic expertise of Fonteyn and Nureyev.
They are perfect individually, and pluperfect together. And, most significantly, in this show they have become the insider’s insiders.
Yes, nowadays they sometimes whirl over the top, grabbing the audience dizzily with them, they occasionally appear to ad-lib (although never self-indulgently), while here and there they freeze one another with dimly suppressed laughter for the sheer fun of it.
But these two beautifully honed and complementary performances (the yin and yang of comedy) are nothing less than magisterial. All of us can hardly wait for the upcoming movie to make the fugitive permanent.
Equally polished – and also virtually etched into the original cast – are those returning masters of camp Gary Beach as the vainglorious director Roger de Bris and Roger Bart as his aide de camp, Carmen Ghia. They have clearly patented swish and bottled it.
Add to these such comparative but coruscating newcomers as John Treacy Egan as the short-fused Nazi Franz Liebkind and Angie Schworer as the long-stemmed Swede Ulla, and you understand why everyone – not least Brooks and his choreographer and director, Susan Stroman – are doing a fandango on their way to the bank.
For now, it’s Springtime for Hitler and the entire satiric crew. A four-star show? Nay . . . with this cast, give it five!
All they need now is a quartet brave enough to take over, when the time comes, from Lane, Broderick, Beach and Bart.
It was hard enough the first time around. Now, after this deserved fresh hullabaloo, the producers of “The Producers” will need replacements with an insouciant air of kamikaze about them.
