The Producers review: Mel Brooks nazi musical is a laugh riot

There's not much to laugh about these days but Mel Brooks' musical is an exception. The story of a down on his luck Broadway producer who discovers the sure fire way of making money is to produce a sure fire flop by way of a little creative accounting has been through several iterations since the original 1967 movie. The musical adaptation premiered in 2001 and when this latest version was first seen at The Menier Chocolate Factory last year it was clearly destined for the West End.

Directed by Patrick Marber, it ramps up the camp to the max and beyond. No-one escapes Brooks' metaphorical custard pies - Jews, Nazis, Gays, Swedes, Broadway producers - all get covered in pie filling as Brooks takes no prisoners and lets loose a barrage of jokes, gags, and lyrics (he wrote everything) that might seem offensive to some mealymouthed, purse-lipped party poopers but who cares about them?

An equal opportunity offender, Brooks has enormous fun and passes it on to us via goose-stepping choreography, swastika'd pigeons, a battalion of sex-starved old ladies and a well-endowed nude 'statue'. To call it a laugh riot is the understatement of the year.

Too broad to be a satire, it is more of an elevated farce that combines dog-eared Vaudeville jokes with flippant remarks that might have given the late Barry Humphries pause. Happily bringing the same cast from the Menier production, this is pretty well unaltered except that it is bigger in scale - more of the same only more so. Lorin Latarro's dance sequences are to die laughing for (the walking frame tap dance in particular), the lyrics are contagiously funny (one line is even a lip-synced recording by Brooks himself - "Don't be stupid be a smarty/Come and join the Nazi Party") and the performances are superb.

Andy Nyman is perfect as the seedy, greasy producer Max Bialystock and is brilliantly paired with Marc Antolin's as his anxiety-ridden accountant Leo Bloom. Add in Joanna Woodward as Swedish sexpot Ulla, Harry Morrison's Luger-wielding, pigeon-fancying Bavarian playwright Franz Liebkind whose musical Springtime for Hitler Max and Leo light upon as the guaranteed flop that ironically will make them rich.

Marber raises the level of camp-anology to 11 with Trevor Ashley's economy sized gay director Roger DeBries and his assistant Carmen Ghia (Raj Ghatak) but if you're going to push the envelope of bad taste you might as well go the whole hog; nobody here gets special treatment. The best way to destroy Nazis is through humour as has been the case since Chaplin's The Great Dictator, Lubitsch's To Be Or Not To Be (remade by Brooks) and TV's Hogan's Heroes.

But Brooks goes even further by introducing an element of genuine warmth and friendship between the two would-be fraudsters that is movingly conveyed in the latter songs Betrayed - in which Nyman replays every step of their journey to unwanted success - and 'Til Him which is a love song by any other name. When all around is gloom and despondency, laughter is the best medicine. Dr Brooks will see you now.

THE PRODUCERS AT THE GARRICK TO FEBRUARY 21