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A camp musical that questions the sexuality of, and openly champions, Adolf Hitler does not sound like the ingredients for a hit musical. Yet, it is exactly this which a scheming producer and a stardom-dreaming accountant bring to the stage in Patrick Marber’s blisteringly funny revival of the musical based upon the iconic Mel Brooks film.

Max Bialystock (Andy Nyman) is slowly becoming a laughing stock on Broadway. Once a star theatre producer, Bialystock lands flop after flop, leaving him hard up on cash and looking to make a quick buck. Things look doomed until his accountant, Leopald Bloom (Marc Antolin), inadvertently gives him the idea to trick his elderly investors into stumping up cash for a sure-fire flop, and then escaping with the leftover money. It is a madcap idea, especially when the pair, with Bloom teaming with Bialystock to escape the doldrums of accountancy, settle on the outrageous Springtime for Hitler musical as their chosen production. What follows is a roaring comedy as the pair desperately try to avoid the unthinkable, making the piece actually a success, calling upon ‘the worst director on Broadway’, Roger (Trevor Ashley) and the Nazi sympathiser writer Franz (Harry Morrison) to bring the world’s worst idea for a musical to the stage. 

Over two and a half hours, The Producers is exceptionally funny, pushing boundaries and offering a feast of visual and verbal gags that both delight and shock in equal measure. Patrick Marber’s direction breathes new life into this musical, with the director given free rein to move away from previous versions during this revival’s initial Menier Chocolate Factory run, and the Garrick’s similar stage space configuration works a charm here. 

It is also aided by an incredible cast. Nyman’s greasy-haired Bialystock is tireless in his quest to make a quick dollar, and shameless in his seduction of increasingly older elderly women to fund his theatrical exploits. Yet despite his total conman personality, Nyman still manages to carve out from within Bialystock an utterly brilliant character whom it is impossible not to, in some way, root for. Nyman’s portrayal is both genuine and hysterically funny, but his ability to inject humour into not just the dialogue but into his physical choreography too is superb. 

Alongside Nyman, Antolin’s stardom-hungry accountant Leopald is wonderfully goofy, and his naivety is a nice contrast to Bialystock’s brash outlook. His first big number, ‘I Wanna Be A Producer’, gets increasingly glitzier and, like Nyman’s Max, it is impossible not to be totally enamoured by this portrayal of Leopald. The pair blends perfectly with each other, forming a formidable double act here. 

The show’s wider cast also dazzles. Ashley’s fierce camp director, Roger, is bold and wonderfully risqué, supported by wonderful melodramatic assistant Carmen (Raj Ghatak). There is also a strong turn from Harry Morrison’s Nazi-loving Hitler fanboy, Franz, who pens Springtime for Hitler. Franz’s pet pigeons are well incorporated into this production, and it really is with Franz’s arrival that the play’s outlandish and outrageous humour goes up a few notches. 

This is no more evident than in the brilliantly barmy second half, when the play within a play gets underway. On paper, plastering the stage with flowery swastikas, carrying increasingly larger German stereotypes (pretzels and sausages) on enormous forks and bringing a carriage carrying the Führer to the stage all sound like ideas which should get a play shut down, yet here they serve as gag after gag in a relentless tour de force of humour. 

Marber’s direction does not skimp on the shock or the chaos of the musical, and it is all the better for it. Of course, a musical about Hitler is a terrible idea, but a musical about the making of a musical about Hitler? Now you’ve got a hit on your hands. A triumph.