The Producers (Springtime for Hitler) - The new Mel Brooks musical - Lyric Theatre - 05/06/05

Ethan Switch - Monday, 6 June 2005 - Print Version

On the monitor outside the doors of the Lyric Theatre, it's pretty damn evident that the singing and dancing of The Producers is already well under way. This is the result of stepping one minute on the casino floor. Even within the skin of five minutes out on the tickets, the first number is already walking off stage left.

From four rows from the orchestra pit, down in the stalls, the stage sits just above eye level. Not too high and just about right without having the neck work too much to stay afloat.

Cramming little insecurities and foibles down the throat, comfort is an issue watching Tom Burlinson bring Leo Bloom into the show. And it's not with the performance, more on the character and the set up of his lot in life. Meek and extremely mild-mannered, the pacing of the show loses out to this introductory session and really hurts it for the main first half of the first half of the show. Burlinson's voice in the non-singing parts holds out for the weak and ineffectual nature of Bloom. An accountant with nowhere to go but up as he holds hands with shifty Broadway producer, Max Bialystock.

Reg Livermore, who plays Bialystock, is nothing like the guy from TV walking around with a hammer nailing pot plants to toilet bowls to show off to the family. Forcefully feisty and so very slimy, Livermore walks and talks Bialystock down a line between being really despicable and charming.

Chloë Dallimore, as the intriguingly foreign Ulla, is a stunning tower of legs that shoot up into the rafters and beyond. Working with an accent, it's hard to pick out if she ever falters. The stress on certain vowels kind of like listening to a stroke victim talk normally. At times, but without the ultimate futility in understanding a lick. Definitely a solid reason for laughs skimming across streams of innuendo.

Back from the intermission, The Producers spits out a flavour that walks higher than the running before the break in the performance. Everything climbs up from the pits as it drives home with a force of funny that is kinder and more gentler to the senses. Punch lines aren't as heavily beaten anymore. They breathe and work to the audience's delight.

Songs are quick and the singing quicker with a sense of urgency. Like it's all bearing fruit with not enough baskets and there's no time to waste in watching the mascara run dry.

Springtime for Hitler, the musical within the musical, works under a glorious set of gunfire and explosions. Costumes to rival beauty pageant entries, sets that blow up visually, glitter fossicking in all sorts of nooks and crannies, it's all here and more so. The amount of sparkle and rampant glitz is near blinding. No mercy is given to Adolf Hitler, a warbling man who flaps around like an infantile in his world conquering ways.

Teasing out its non-existence, Springtime for Hitler delivers this sense of potency with short glimpses into its being. Really showering a fantastic musical, the squint glint is enough to prick the desire.

Bert Newton bleeds out this Benny Hill ooze working coddling pigeons as Franz Leibkind. Funny and pudgy in appearance, he does much to work the crazy from the playwright's mind. Tony Sheldon as hack director Roger DeBris swings back and forth between butch and prissy so easily it's nothing if not to be in awe. Grant Piro, aka Carmen Ghia, nails his performance and air as the assistant to the director. Times with Piro/Ghia go on forever milking out extra laughs are supremely tasty. More camp would certainly be welcome.

Set design and pieces feature copious amounts of details while being at the same time slim and quick. Their presence is solid and hold strong during each thrashing and slamming of doors, drawers and bodies. Old ladies fly through the air and turn in a stomping number in their droves. Witty lyrics dress themselves in snappy trade dress of beats and rhythms that render themselves instantly forgettable save for plenty of hooks that stick a piece in the mind.

Watching various shells break by the night's end kicks a wonderfully uplifting feeling. The relationships the characters build seems genuine even if under the firing gun of a less than noble starting line. The entire cast are evidently enjoying themselves as they deliver the closing number in a fast and wry fashion.

Satirically scathing and flapping deeply in jokes, The Producers is an impressively fantastic show by the end of the second half.

Absolutely, positively gay.

Ethan Switch