Garrick Theatre, London.
23 October 2025.
The Producers – The Mel Brooks Musical is fantastically sharp, clever wit, packed with never-ending innuendos, and presented in a top quality classic farcical style. Literally, sit back and enjoy!
The opening line in the programme states that writer Mel Brooks was, “Born to make people laugh.” What immense talent to be able to write both dialogue and a host of larger-than-life characters with oodles of scope for actors to develop and deliver visual and physical humour in the way that today’s cast certainly did!
In honesty, this was a musical cast who all gave their all and must take equal credit for the musical’s onstage success. It was delightful there was a visible live band above the stage; they accompanied the action so vivaciously and joyously, it was great to be able to see and applaud them.
Twinkling lightbulbs surrounded the stage, and chasing spotlights played on the red curtain before it opened, all contributing to a good old-fashioned entertainment vibe; especially as tap-dancing usherettes then entered through the audience and the curtain lifted on a bright, high-energy song and dance number.
To capture the plot of The Producers in any detail here would take an age; there were so many fabulous little nuances that made every scene shine. If you blinked, you’d have missed something in this fast-paced musical. What stood out in amongst the continuous gags, was the wealth of different relationships that were played out on stage, and the underlying theme of love. Including but not exclusively, the blossoming and then firm friendship of Bialystock and Bloom, the flirtation and developing love story of Bloom and Ulla, and the underlying love and pride between Roger and Carmen (played by Trevor Ashley and Raj Ghatak respectively), speckled with petty spats.
Joanna Woodward was divine in her deliverance of her character Ulla. Gentle yet continuous fun was poked at her accent and mispronunciations, but she was oblivious to harmless mockery and remained truly pure hearted in her dedication to Leo Bloom. Marc Antolin has developed such great physical characterisation of Leo Bloom. He was enchanting to watch in a way that was reminiscent of Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean. He was unwaveringly Leo complete with nervous twitches, jittery stammers and odd gait — falling into hysterical panics and losing his inhibitions when dancing with Ulla or tap dancing with the chorus girls. The extra touches – sniffing and playing with his blue comfort blanket and hanging it up in place of his Producer’s hat when he’d finally earned it — were subtle but spot on.
Harry Morrison was appalling fantastic in the role of Franz. The audience were thrilled at his outlandishly camp and misguided patriotic behaviour. And Andy Nyman as Max Bialystock was dependable and reliable, in a great way – it felt safe to sit back and allow him to lead us through the hilarity.
Ensemble dancers flew on and off the stage through multiple speedy costume and character changes, as well as slick prop and scene changes. Standing out among them was Jermaine Woods, hilarious in his representation of the pink legwarmer-wearing choreographer.
Chorus dances were dazzling and full of personality and energy. There was plenty of tap dance involved, too, both in entertainment and in humour. Stereotypical character after stereotypical character popped on to the stage, and whenever you thought it couldn’t possibly get cheekier, it did. So many crass and socially unacceptable themes and lines, opinions and gags. All delivered with such cheery aplomb that it became impossible not to giggle and succumb to the parodies.
Outstanding entertainment with a cheesy but satisfying finale. The Producers are outed trying to cut corners and make an easy buck but finally realised they could make a success of themselves by doing it the right way after all. Very easy to be offended by this production if you chose to be, but equally almost impossible to deny that you’d had a really fantastic time!
By Louise Ryrie of Dance Informa.
