Review: The Producers
THE SUN IS NOW RISING ON HITLER’S
Hesa City Theatre
The farce musical is one of the most unbridled laughing bombs in ages.
1968: Budding director Mel Brooks makes his debut film Spring Comes for Hitler and wins an Oscar for screenplay. In 2001, a musical based on the film premieres in New York, winning 12 Tony Awards and being an instant world-class success.
August 2007: The musical finally premieres in Finland and the audience gets to howl with tears in their eyes to a pretty much complete bomb of laughter. The musical, which conquered the world under the name The Producers , largely follows the story of the 1968 film. Of course, some completely new characters have been included, and the role of some in the whole has been increased, and at the very end, the story has been continued beyond the end of the film.
Max Bialystock (Esko Roine) is a theatre producer who has seen his best days a long time ago, and whose latest work has been slammed and performances have ended once. So, as if to get along, he plays naughty games with old grannies on the couch in his office and pays checks for his favors.
One day, Leo Bloom (Antti Timonen), a nerve-wracking accountant, comes to the office and discovers that under certain circumstances, a flop show can earn more than a successful play. When several investors invest a million euros in a show, for example, and not all the money is used and the performances end immediately after the premiere, no one asks about the lost money.
Bialystock talks around the honest Bloom and the play Spring Arrives for Hitler, written by a dead Nazi, which presents Hitler in a very positive light, is chosen as a sure flop. The money for the performance is collected by tricking wealthy grannies, and the city’s most untalented theatre makers are collected as creators. But what will happen at the premiere…?
As we know from the movies, Mel Brooks’ humor does not respect or spare anyone. The story of the musical features Nazis and their grandiose ceremonies, old grannies, Jews, homosexuals, all kinds of authorities and the theatre world in general.
There are also vulgar features in the humour, which may test the limits of some viewers’ sense of humour, but he is hardly ever downright mean. Brooks just digs out humor from many topics where you wouldn’t think you would find it at all. Quite a sense of irony is shown by the fact that a Jewish man has made a hilarious musical about the Nazis!
Brooks’ skills as a humorist are hardly surprising to anyone anymore, but the music he composed may do it. The music of the performance is extremely traditional, swinging show music reminiscent of the good old musicals. When you combine them with Brooks-like humour, the viewers are in for a unique entertainment experience. Brooks tears out the last remnants of musical clichés and makes such an outrageous slander that the viewer doesn’t always know whether to laugh or cry. Enjoyable music and downright ingenious humor when they are on stage at the same time for most of the performance!
Even though the performance is pushing Brooks’ comic and musical genius, of course, it could not succeed without skilled performers, who are the best in the country in the city theater. This entire page would be filled with text if I praised everyone who deserves praise, but for now, let’s try to focus on the best of the best.
Neil Hardwick, a skilled humorist himself, has as a director brilliantly held the strings of the massive performance in his hands. Esko Roine’s merits to the farce as a master of always important timing have been known for several years. Antti Timonen is a suitable counterpart for him, who also brings a touch of romance to the craziness humor when he falls in love with the lovely Swedish-speaking Ulla, who is played charmingly by Anna-Maija Tuokko . Her blonde secretary is just as much of a cliché, but what does it matter when she makes the audience shudder with laughter.
Santeri Kinnunen, who plays the role of a super-lousy director, throws an insanely funny Hitler parody in the musical in the deliberately overdone Hitler’s Sun Rises number, which features e.g. tap-dancing Nazis and bombastic marching patterns, as well as tanks and cannons and paratroopers (really!). Lari Halme as his assistant and life partner Carmen is a role model for all buffoons and a bravura performed with an absolutely unconscious sense of style. An ensemble of supporting actors in several different roles completes the excellent group of performers.
I really can’t remember the last time I laughed as wildly in the theatre with tears in my eyes and stomach as I did on a Thursday night in Helsinki. The applause and cheers heard after the performance were also unique in their loudness. Theatre director Asko Sarkola does not need to worry; When the so-called. The jungle drum is still starting to rattle, there is no doubt that this will run in the theater for a long time.