Review: The Producers at The Liverpool Empire

The Producers at The Empire? What a production!
The preposterous premise of this Mel Brooks’ comedy classic is that if a Broadway show should be a first-night flop, the producers might actually walk off with more of a profit than if they had a hit on their hands. Which is exactly what the seedy Max Bialystock (the wonderful Cory English) and his naïve accountant Max Bloom (a surprisingly fleet-footed Jason Manford) plan. Thus begins the search for the most appalling play and the direst director on Broadway.

They hit fool’s gold when they turn up a homage to the Furher in the form of Springtime for Hitler by Adolf apologist and Nazi nutter, Franz Liebkind (Ross Noble in an exuberant cameo.) Added to the mix is the uber-camp cross-dressing director, Roger De Bris (David Bedella) and they have a recipe for theatrical disaster. But things don’t go according to plan…

As musical comedy goes, it was a risk. Written in 1968, barely 20 years after the atrocities of WW2, the show makes light of Hitler’s rise, with such doggerel as, “Don’t be stupid, be a smarty; Come and join the Nazi party,” and hilariously choreographed goose-stepping. But it is this very brevity upon which the play’s genius turns. After all, what could humiliate Hitler’s memory more than being portrayed prancing across the stage in the campest of glittery leiderhosen by the very actors whose sexual proclivity he sought to wipe out, put on by a couple of Jewish producers whose very ethnicity he sought to exterminate?

And it’s not just Nazis and homosexuals who are lampooned: there are the randy octogenarian ladies who sign over cheques to the louche and libidinous Bialystock in return for “dirty games”; the bored and boring bean-counters whose number-crunching plight is deliciously echoed in the music of slavery, Negro spiritual and the ‘oy vey’ of traditional Yiddish songs; the platoon of New Yoik Irish plod who turn up to investigate the fraud.

“Keep it happy, keep it snappy, keep it gay!” is Roger De Bris’ direction for the play within the play but must have been director Matthew Wright’s mantra for this production. The performances are as tight as the cast’s spangly hot pants, as light as the footwork of Cory English’s Max Bialystock. It’s a high-octane three hours of outrageous fun.

The Producers
The Liverpool Empire Theatre
June 3 – June 6
PR Rating: *****