Play review
'The Producers' is a hit at Civic Arts
By Cary Ginell soundthink@aol.com

One of the most successful Broadway musicals came to the Conejo Valley last week when "The Producers" completed a four-day run at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza.

Before departing for its next destination, the Long Beach Convention Center (where the show plays again beginning Friday), the Theater League company left hysterical audiences in its wake, many proclaiming the show one of the funniest they'd ever seen. And no wonder; the show cleaned up in the 2001 Tony Awards, garnering 12 statuettes, the most ever by a musical.

As many know, "The Producers" was originally a film, the brainchild of Mel Brooks, who in 1968 was a comedy writer and occasional television personality making his debut as a film director.

The story of an unscrupulous Broadway producer's scheme to cash in on a deliberately abominable show starred Zero Mostel as producer Max Bialystock and a then-unknown Gene Wilder as nebbish accountant Leo Bloom.

Receiving mixed reviews, the film has nevertheless fared well over the years, achieving cult status long before Brooks decided to turn it into a full-fledged musical. It's not often that a producer can revise his own production, but Brooks did just that, and in many ways improved upon his own work.

In producing the musical, Brooks was faced with several challenges. Most adaptations take the opposite direction, going from stage to screen, not the other way around. Also, Mostel's and Wilder's performances had defined the roles of Bialystock and Bloom, as film is seen by more people than Broadway shows. Finally, certain elements of the film had to be changed, while the basic structure was left intact. Most obvious was the play's need for a score.

The film included three songs, two of which (both written by Brooks) were retained for the stage musical: "Springtime for Hitler" and "Prisoners of Love." Brooks set to work writing additional songs, and although not a professional songwriter, he did a serviceable job using standard Tin Pan Alley formulas combined with witty lyrics.

Most notable amongst the plot changes was the expansion of the roles of Ulla (formerly an Englishchallenged sexpot secretary) and Bloom (who was transformed into a semi-leading man role). In the film, Bloom was merely a neurotic accountant, but Brooks gave him the added incentive of a lifelong desire to produce on Broadway and established a romantic relationship between Bloom and Ulla.

The anachronistic role of "L.S.D.," the beatnik/hippie Dick Shawn played in the film, was jettisoned, and the bumbling neo-Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind's character was expanded to take up the slack.

Aside from these additions, the rest of the film was basically left intact.

The company that came to Thousand Oaks was universally splendid. As Bialystock, veteran actor Jason Simon ably invoked the corpulent insanity of Mostel with a dab of Nathan Lane, while Austin Owen's Bloom winningly crossed the line between slapstick and romantic lead.

Other highlights included overthe-top performances by Brad Nacht, as the crossdressing director Roger DeBris, and his mincing assistant Carmen Ghia, overplayed to perfection by John West. Despite the outrageous stereotyping of gays, Brooks saved his best jabs, however, for the Nazis, heaping upon them the ridicule that Brooks has said in interviews is the best kind of revenge.

Although much of the dialogue was lifted directly from the 1968 film, there were elements of the musical that cleaned up the messier aspects of the original script. The "Springtime for Hitler" production number was masterfully done, right down to the Busby Berkeleyinspired overhead shot of the revolving swastika, showing that you can work magic on stage with mirrors.

After being arrested and jailed, Bialystock's cellblock recap of the plot (an obvious homage to Danny Kaye) was a tour de force for Simon.

All in all, Theater League's stellar production of "The Producers" showed how the play established itself as one of Broadway's all-time hits. Still, it is worth your while to revisit the original film and see how Brooks had already done most of the work decades earlier.