Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in The Producers. Photo by Paul Kolnik courtesy Playbill.com

Less than three weeks after its April 19th opening, the producers of The Producers announced a $27 million advance and a record number of Tony Nominations. Critics are falling over each other in hyperbolic heaven, one even insisting that Mel Brooks, the show's co-creator(with Tom Meehan)/composer/lyricist/producer be mayor of NY for the next eight years.  When a show is so hyped the audience comes in ready to laugh and, indeed, they do even before the laughs are earned, but, I must confess, several lines into the brilliant opening scene I was there along with them as the show immediately hits its height of zaniness with comedy, choreography and clever sets and, amazingly, stays there. So, "yes", is my answer to the most frequently asked question, the show IS worth every penny!

Nathan Lane as Bialystock, the frequently failed Broadway producer, and Matthew Broderick, as the timid accountant Leo Bloom, his reluctant partner, are show biz' most demented duo. Lane maintains a high decibel manic panic, beautifully counter pointed by Broderick's taut, traumatic terror. They cook up a scheme in which the only way to make money is to produce a stupendous flop and hence keep all the investors' money, a group of elderly, sexually repressed ladies. To that end they gather probably the most outrageous assembly of characters ever onstage.   Even their names are funny. They begin by selecting the atrocious script of the Fuehrer-adoring Franz Liebkind (Brad Oscar), "Springtime for Hitler", which they make into a "new neo-Nazi musical". To further insure failure they choose quarreling queens Roger de Bris (an over the top, flamingly gay Gary Beach) as director and his common law concierge, Carmen Ghia (Roger Bart, a show unto himself), and their light in the loafers "creative team" (Peter Marinos, Ray Willis, Jeffrey Denman, Kathy Fitzgerald). The auditions alone for the title role could be extracted for a nightclub act. To complete the idiocy they hire a language-challenged Scandinavian blonde bombshell, Ulla (Cady Huffman) as receptionist.

It's the same theater of the absurd that propelled TV's legendary Sid Ceasar show, on which Brooks cut his comedic teeth. Brooks has never seen a movie he hasn't stolen from and hilarious references are found throughout the show: "Stop the world, I want to get on!" "I'm not going into the toilet, I'm going into show business" "You're going out there an overtly gay has-been and you're coming back a supposedly straight star"(this a loose quote). "I didn't know there was a war, I lived in the back". "This guy couldn't direct you to the bathroom". When Hitler appears onstage in his madcap musical solo number he evokes Charlie Chan's image in City Lights before he launches into "Hail Myself". When the cops raid the office after the assured flop becomes an illegal hit its right out of Helz-a-Poppin with slamming doors, shutting windows, disguising desks.

At some point any pretense of staying in context is abandoned. As the shy Bloom backs away from an offered kiss from sexpot Ulla she says "why are you moving downstage right?" Its as if much of the schtick stuffed show was written on the wing, or hoof, during rehearsals (would that one could have been a fly on the wall for those).

Director Susan Stroman has timed this farce to a nanosecond. And there's nothing the ever innovative choreographer can't make into a dance prop. The adding machines in an accounting office become the pulse for a brilliant sequence in which the unhappy Bloom fantasizes being a producer and chorines, in William Ivey Long's green money colored costumes, tap out of the closet, develop into a full chorus line onstage led by Bloom in top hat and cane singing and dancing "I Want To Be A Producer" in the loose limbed moves of a non dancer trying his endearing best, and segway into Bialystock's office, where it becomes a duet between the new producing partners. One song, four seamless scenes of scintillating theater delivering a significant element of the plot! And wait till you see what Stroman can do with hospital walkers!

There is a best selling show album but be advised that even veteran Doug Besterman's brilliantly brassy Broadway orchestrations cannot fully disguise Brook's only weakness, his stock sounding tunes. The score alone cannot convey the essence of the show because so much of it relies on the visual. Robin Wagner's sets are chock full of inside jokes: like the names of shows the team will produce: KATZ, FUNNY BOY II, SOUTH PASSAIC, and the clever use of the Busby Berkeley technique in the infamous dancing Hitlers sequence. Long's Chrysler building inspired dress for director De Bris must be seen to be believed!

My solitary complaint is that Mr Brooks, known for his excesses and evidently unmuzzled here, has the cast sing an add on song at their final curtain call, "Good-bye!", during which the cast, enjoying a well deserved standing ovation, smugly tells the audience: you've seen the show, there's no more, now go home! Imagine if the show were not a hit and the cast had the effrontery to tell you to leave! My advice - get out before they chase you out!