Review: The Producers

A MILLION-DOLLAR NAZI HIT

Critics and audiences came together to love Mel Brooks ‘ musical based on his own 1960s film on Broadway in 2001 and London in 2004. The concept was skilfully calculated and prepared with millions.
A poor Broadway producer from the 1950s makes a deal with his sissy accountant: they make the worst musical in history, rake in the money of the financiers, i.e. lovesick old, and disappear to Nevada.
The Hitler-worshipping script of the blind émigré Nazi turns into a megalomaniac homoglitter hit that grinds mammon like a Yankee shampoo.

For Mel Brooks (b. 1926), nothing is sacred, so to speak, and (only) because he is not only skilled but also a Jew himself, he is forgiven for his Hitler’s vulgarity. It has been speculated that Lloyd-Webber-style musicals of pain have eaten the laughs out of the audience with their pathos: so Brooks’ completely old-fashioned, cringe-comic and nostalgic creation, both in form and music, sells perfectly.
The fact that the performers are allowed to loosen the clichés, era and archetypes of the parodies in caricatures, free from the heroic and romantic nature of the musical, produces more genuine laughter in the audience than in a long time. However, there is unnecessary repetition at the beginning of the script.
The best ingredients for a plush-sweet American mega-song at the City Theatre are excellent choreography and snappy casting.

Markku Nenonen’s tap-dancing, lively choreography makes natural use of both tradition and parody, and the ensemble enjoys it.

Good deal

There are plenty of skills in the main roles. Esko Roine’s sovereignly trickster Max Bialystok, for example, unleashes a dizzying prison song number at the end. In the role of Nysvero’s Leo Bloom, Antti Timonen dances and sings like Fred Astaire, although his tenor is better. Anna-Maija Tuokko shines amazingly through the song, dance and charm numbers of the Swedish Marilyn clone Ulla.

Risto Kaskilahti knows how to make the most of a crazy Nazi, also in German. Santeri Kinnunen’s charismatic queen, gay director Roger sings darkly handsomely as Adolf. Lari Halme , as a lively but restrained auxiliary queen, is very unrestrained in his body language.
In the Finnish translation, for example, “Keep It Gay” has been translated into “Herttilii“. The Village People clichés make me laugh.

Elina Kolehmainen’s costumes (more than 300) are delicious in their details and colours, including Hitler’s beige, velvet and grotesque Valkyrie creations praising the Third Reich. Set designer Jyrki Seppä puts big visions into play.
With this production, the City Theatre celebrates its hundred-year history initiated by its predecessors. Cleverly calculated.