THE PRODUCERS

Garrick Theatre

★★★★★

“Naughty throughout, the production embraces its sparkly bad taste with debauched chutzpa”

Some shows come round at just the right moment. At a time when everyone is avoiding the political cracks in the pavement for fear of causing offence, along bounces Mel Brooks’ delightfully unrestrained The Producers gatecrashing the zeitgeist and reminding us that laughter can be the most subversive act of all.

Seems like a relief to be able to guffaw without checking the taste-o-meter.

Patrick Marber’s revival, first seen at the Menier Chocolate Factory, has now graduated to the Garrick, bringing with it the same riotous mix of bad taste, Broadway pizazz, spectacle and sheer joy.

The premise is still a comic marvel. Max Bialystock, a washed-up producer, has found a way to bankroll his flops by seducing elderly widows. Enter Leo Bloom, a neurotic accountant who spots a loophole: with creative accounting, more money could be made from a disaster than a hit.

Together they hatch a plan to stage the worst musical ever written. Unfortunately for them, that play – Springtime for Hitler – is embraced as satirical genius.

Andy Nyman’s Max is an inspired mix of sleaze and clowning, hustling with the air of a man who might sell his own mother if it kept the lights on. Nyman delivers – always.

Marc Antolin makes a marvellously twitchy Leo, a tangle of nerves and Broadway dreams. Together, they are a comic odd couple whose energy drives the show. Their routines – whether sparring, scheming, or tentatively finding a kind of friendship – are delivered with sparkling timing.

The supporting company maintain the standard – this is an ensemble of comic genius.

Joanna Woodward belts gloriously as Ulla, the secretary who offers romance as well as vocal fireworks. Harry Morrison’s Franz Liebkind is a delicious caricature of the deranged Nazi playwright, his lederhosen-clad lurching matched only by his chorus of puppet pigeons. Best of all, Trevor Ashley brings the house down as Roger de Bris, the flamboyant director pressed into service as the Führer, a vision in spangles and satin who manages to be both ridiculous and weirdly lovable.

Marber and choreographer Lorin Latarro work wonders in giving this the sweep of a Broadway blockbuster. Old ladies tap-dance on Zimmer frames, accountants break into showbiz numbers, and stormtroopers goose-step in perfectly drilled formation. Scott Pask’s lightbulb-framed set and Paul Farnsworth’s ever-more glittering and outré costumes heighten the delirium, while Brooks’ songs – “I Wanna Be a Producer”, “Betrayed” – still land with deadpan brilliance.

The show-within-a-show, Springtime for Hitler is the most bad taste, gloriously over-the-top sequence you will see anywhere in London. It deserves, and nearly receives, its own giddy standing ovation.

The satire has softened a little with time, but it is genuinely funny. Not funny as in light-entertainment-knowing-chuckles but the real thing, and slightly febrile. It is Mel Brooks after all.

What lifts this production above mere lark is its unencumbered freedom of spirit. Naughty throughout, the production embraces its sparkly bad taste with debauched chutzpah. It is like a big guilty secret we all share in a tucked-away speak-easy from where the social media stormtroopers are barred.

For all the lechery, fraud and outrageous parody, there is genuine affection in the bond between Max and Leo, and a sense that Brooks’ ultimate subject is not fascism but the lunacy of showbusiness itself. It is both love-letter and send-up, celebrating the power of theatre even as it mocks its excesses.

The Garrick now houses the most joyously tasteless evening in town. It is the ultimate antidote to All That Horrible Stuff Out There. It may be shocking, outrageous and insulting, but you will surrender. You vill surrendah.

THE PRODUCERS

Garrick Theatre

Reviewed on 15th September 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Manuel Harlan

Previously reviewed at this venue:

MRS WARREN’S PROFESSION | ★★★★★ | May 2025

UNICORN | ★★★★ | February 2025

WHY AM I SO SINGLE? | ★★★★ | September 2024

BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF | ★★★ | June 2024

FOR BLACK BOYS … | ★★★★ | March 2024

HAMNET | ★★★ | October 2023

THE CROWN JEWELS | ★★★ | August 2023

ORLANDO | ★★★★ | December 2022

THE PRODUCERS

★★★★

“We are fascinated by what Lucas has to say, but it’s the music that truly speaks for itself”

As we sit round an upright piano, we are given an in-depth analysis of the aftereffects of striking a piano key. How the slim slab of ivory trips a lever which brings a soft felt-lined hammer onto a metal string, which, in turn, causes the air to vibrate eventually spreading across the room and filling each of us with the same vibration that we call music. We are inextricably linked and reeled in by the unifying hook that transfixes us. Anoushka Lucas is the one telling us all this, although she doesn’t need this allegory to catch, and to hold, our attention. She is a natural-born raconteur, with a charismatic flair to match.

“Elephant” is written, composed and performed by Lucas. We suspect that there are veiled, autobiographical elements hidden within her monologue, but she is telling us Lylah’s story who, at the age of seven, watched a group of workmen rip out the windows of her family’s council flat to lower a piano into their living room. From then on it dominated her small living space, her life and her love affair with music began. This love of music drives the narrative, but it is fuelled by various pivotal moments in Lylah’s life that shape her identity as a mixed-race, working-class girl who dares to be different. Who dares to cross the class divide. Who dares to defy the white, misogynistic expectations that music executives have for her career. Who dares to challenge the innate and unearned privilege of colonialist descendants.

Lylah is continually drawn back to the piano. Sitting centre stage, slowly revolving as Lucas plays and sings. Entirely acoustic and without the aid of technological trickery her singing is intimate, rich and mellow. The piano is an extension of Lylah but when a song ends, we are back in the narrative and the piano becomes the elephant in the room. Lylah’s piano has ivory keys, and she has a hard time reconciling the beauty of her instrument with the cruelty that went into its construction. The brutal tearing out of the tusks from the elephant’s face, the use of enslaved people to transport the tusk. Lucas is able to revisit this theme with ease without hammering the point. Jess Edwards’ supple direction is sensitive to the crescendos and diminuendos of Lylah’s story; each element played as part of a rhapsody. A sharp piano note heralds a twist in the tale while Laura Howards lighting shifts through shades to illuminate the various phases of her life. We learn a lot about Lylah’s childhood – Lucas is expert at seeing the world through a child’s eyes, and then retaining that unfiltered honesty, bringing it with her into adulthood. Love comes in the form of Leo, a session drummer, who invites her to his family cottage. The ’cottage’ is, in fact, a nine-bedroom country manor, furnished with the trappings of the Empire. Including a mahogany grand piano. Lylah cannot prevent herself addressing the ‘elephant in the room’ – literal and symbolic – and the anger that pours out is heartfelt and human without being sanctimonious or political.

We then return to the music. Then back to another episode of life. But always back to the music. Sometimes the musical interludes are brief, and the show could perhaps do with more performance and less talk. The show is bookended by the observation that the black and the white keys on a piano are disproportionately balanced. It is an interesting analogy at the beginning, but we don’t need it repeated. Lucas has shown us that music is blind to this distinction. We are fascinated by what Lucas has to say, but it’s the music that truly speaks for itself.

THE PRODUCERS

Garrick Theatre

★★★★★

“Naughty throughout, the production embraces its sparkly bad taste with debauched chutzpa”

THE PRODUCERS

Garrick Theatre

Reviewed on 15th September 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Manuel Harlan

Previously reviewed at this venue:

THE PRODUCERS

THE PRODUCERS

THE PRODUCERS

ELEPHANT

Menier Chocolate Factory

★★★★

“We are fascinated by what Lucas has to say, but it’s the music that truly speaks for itself”

ELEPHANT

Menier Chocolate Factory

Reviewed on 30th May 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Manuel Harlan

Previously reviewed at this venue:

ELEPHANT

ELEPHANT

ELEPHANT

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