The Producers

Mel Brooks’ irreverent and flamboyant musical, The Producers is one of my favourite shows.  I saw the London production and also the show on tour, I have the CD/DVD etc. so I was looking forward to seeing the Festival Players’ version.  

The Staging of the show is a challenge as there are several locations plus Bialystock’s office has to change from brown to all white walls. The settings were minimal but depicted locations convincingly. The roof terrace with Bialystock and Bloom climbing up through the trap was great.  Well done to the fly men (persons) who did a grand job and to the stage crew on some swift scene changes. All the staging worked well except, in my opinion, for the courtroom. It would have been much better for Bialystock to have been facing the little old ladies rather than alongside the judge.  I was sitting more or less central but I could imagine that the officer standing in front of the judge was masking Bialystock from the right hand side of the auditorium. It also made for one or two awkward moves.  Lighting was good and the overhead shot of the stormtroopers dancing displayed on the screens each side was very effective. Sound effects and body mic control was excellent.  The special effects, by Mike Ruddin, worked a treat. The singing pigeons were a triumph.

Director Alan Hay put his own mark on this show with some nice directorial touches. Costume by Designer Lucy Napthine were very good and what must have been a whole team of dressers are to be congratulated as the many costume changes provided a real challenge.  The orchestra under Musical Director Ana Sanderson was of the highest quality and vocally all Principals, without exception, had great voices and this also goes for the Ensemble too. A couple of times music overpowered performers when underscoring dialogue but that is a small gripe when everything else musically was so good. 

This show is a busy one for the Ensemble.  They are in a large number of scenes in one guise or another and they had obviously worked long and hard: Along Came Bialy in Little Old Lady Land was fun; I Want to Be A Producer was almost a full blown production number complete with showgirls and Springtime for Hitler was great.   Frances Sayer’s choreography was very good and expertly executed. I enjoyed the various routines Frances used to cover scene changes. 

There is more to this show however than the singing and dancing.  It also calls for some great acting. To use an over-used word Matt Wilkinson was a-maz-ing as Max Bialystock. He gave a supremely confident performance which couldn’t be faulted and his rendition of the exceptionally difficult song Betrayed was much talked about afterwards and will linger long in the memory.  Matt  Brown too, as gullible, neurotic Leo Bloom, was absolutely excellent, creating an endearing character. A bravura performance.  Elle Brown provided the love interest with great style (and voice) and was obviously born to play the leggy Swedish blonde Ulla Inga etc. etc. . . 

The role of Roger DeBris, the vain, camp, cross-dressing theatrical director was played most convincingly by Luke Thomas who was matched well by Jacob Nightingale as the highly excitable Carmen. Keep it Gay with Roger and his ‘production team’ was fun too.  Which brings us to the German author of the musical: the slightly unhinged Franz Leibkind played with aplomb by Jonatan Rosten.  

Never mind Max Bialystock - Festival Players have done it again with an absolutely excellent show performing to well deserved full houses.  Congratulations to Director Alan Hay, Musical Director Ana Sanderson, Choreographer Frances Sayer the cast and production team.  An audience member asked us if this was a professional production as it was hard to believe that it was not. Thank you Festival Players for your hospitality and for inviting me along to enjoy such a super production of one of my all time favourite shows. 

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