But if there is a more joyous, irreverent, laughter-filled and thoroughly enjoyable evening to be had in the theatre then I would like to know where.
There are more pleasurable moments per minute, more laughs per line and more top drawer performances in this production than in any other major show in recent memory.
Mel Brooks has taken the basic storyline from his 1968 classic movie and fashioned an even more outrageously non-pc stage show. There is scarcely a target he fails to assault so (though there can hardly be anyone left who doesn’t know of the premise) if you are likely to be offended by jokes and sight gags lampooning, jews, the Nazis, fat people, gays, blacks and the Irish (at a single stroke) old people, foreigners and the mentally fragile then you had best stay away.
The story of the two unlikely partners who plot to stage the biggest flop in Broadway history in order to make a mint but are stymied when their masterpiece of historical re-writing in which the Germans win World War Two, “Springtime for Hitler”, is an unexpected smash, more or less follows that of the film and is consequently staccato and choppy on the stage. However it is all held magnificently together by the inspired direction and chorography of Susan Stroman and enhanced in no small part by the slick design and even slicker lighting design. I can’t recall a show that integrated these elements so successfully into a complementary whole.
Stroman’s achievement in either of her roles would be worthy of the highest praise, but put them together and her accomplishment is little short of miraculous. Her direction is flawlessly fluid and constantly inventive with visual and physical gags coming at you in rapid succession and at a perfectly-judged pace. And her choreography never fails in its quest for invention and creative brio whether it be a chorus of Zimmer-tapping nonagenarians or a goose-stepping, swastika shaped army of the campest Nazis you are ever likely to see strutting the stage in a bemirrored homage to Busby Berkley.
There are a hatful of performances that would stand out in any other show but here seem par for the course. The rubber limbed Lee Evans as the accountant-turned-producer Leopold Bloom turns in a beautifully controlled performance, by turns manic and mooning over the lusciously long limbed love interest of Leigh Zimmerman; Nicolas Colicos is truly wunderbar as the barking mad neo-Nazi writer with troop of performing pigeons; Conleth Hill plays the shows gown-wearing director cum stand-in star to outrageously camp perfection and James Dreyfus displays awesome mastery of timing as his brittle assistant.
But as Max Bialystock, the Broadway creator of the role Nathan Lane is in a class of his own. Here is an actor with such apparently effortless mastery of his role that it is difficult to imagine what the show will be like when he departs on January 10 to begin work on the film. Lane’s reported £38,000 a week is said to be the highest salary ever paid in the West end. He is worth every penny. You will probably never see a performance of such dazzling brilliance in a musical in your lifetime so if you can buy a ticket while he’s still in then do so, if not I suggest you murder your old Jewish Nazi gay granny for hers!
Paul Fowler
