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

CRY-BABY, THE MUSICAL

Arcola Theatre

★★★★★

“Feel-good is the understatement of the year where this show is concerned”

‘It’s a beautiful day for an anti-polio picnic’. So begins the new all-singing, all-dancing “Cry-Baby, The Musical”. This is no surprise if you are armed with the knowledge that the musical is based on the transgressive filmmaker John Waters’ 1990 film. Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan have written the book, with David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger providing the songs. Directed by the Arcola Theatre’s artistic director, Mehmet Ergen, it bursts onto the London stage with an effervescent eccentricity that Waters would be proud of with all his screwball heart.

A couple of words of advice. Leave your expectations at home, along with any judgements, preconceptions or theatrical snobbery. Don’t read the programme notes – the ones that allude to the show dealing with issues of class-based injustices, political relevance, privilege, demonisation… blah blah blah. It really isn’t that deep. Yes, they’re all in there somewhere, cleverly hidden in hilarious, blink-and-you-miss one-liners, but the trick is to just wallow in the whole explosion of joy that this show bombards you with. The story is as shallow as they come. A kind of ‘Grease’ meets ‘Jailhouse Rock’ – but better than both put together. It is 1954. Communism is the big taboo. Wade “Cry-Baby” Walker is the coolest kid in town. He’s a rebel with a cause. A bad guy – though we kind of twig pretty quickly that he’s not really. Allison is the strait-laced rich girl who crosses to the wrong side of the tracks, drawn to his irresistible flame. Forbidden love and teen rebellion run rife while society moral values are turned upside down.

Adam Davidson plays the eponymous ‘Cry-Baby’. His name derives from the fact that he hasn’t cried since his parents died and he was orphaned at a young age (we learn the circumstances of his mum and dad’s tragic demise later). He is the leader of the ‘Drapes’, a misfit crew of baddies with whom the ‘Squares’ (to which Lulu-Mae Pears’ clean-cut Allison belongs) are in awe of, yet fear, in equal measure. Allison has been brought up by her grandmother, the (seemingly) upright Mrs Cordelia Vernon-Williams (Shirley Jameson). Surrounded by a magnificent kaleidoscope of colourful characters, all performed by an even more magnificent cast, the narrative roller-coasts through picnics, self-awareness days, song contests, arson attacks, prison, escape, freedom, atonement, justice, hard-won-love… right up to its preposterously upbeat finale. All the while our smiles get wider and wider, the laughs get stronger, and our toe-tapping turns into all-out body shaking. Feel-good is the understatement of the year where this show is concerned.

The score must have been one of the easiest to write. There’s irony in that statement, but a snippet of truth too. The entire set list is pure pastiche. The chord structures have been handed to Javerbaum and Schlesinger on a plate. Each song is instantly recognisable, yet bizarrely unique. It’s the lyrics that can take the credit – insanely clever, witty and poignant. The writers are masters of rhyming and scanning, and the performers deliver faultlessly. We are transported back to the fifties with the genre defining songs: the close-knit harmonies of ‘Squeaky Clean’, or the rockabilly rhythms of ‘Jukebox Jamboree’. Ballads such as ‘Misery’ and ‘I’m Infected’ tug at our teenage heartstrings and rekindle the memories of our misspent teenage years. The bar is high, but there still manage to be highlights. Shirley Jameson’s ‘Did Something Wrong Once’ threatens to bring the house down, as does Chad Saint Louis (who plays bad boy Dupree) every time he opens his mouth, and lungs. Davidson and Pears smash every number they sing. The ensemble players are, without exception, exceptional. Eleanor Walsh, in particular, as Lenora Frigid (don’t blame me – I didn’t name the characters), whose solo number ‘Screw Loose’ defines her perfectly. Bonkers? Yes! Virtuosic? Without doubt! And how can you fail to enjoy a musical that includes song titles such as ‘Girl Can I Kiss You with Tongues?’ Forget the phrase ‘from the sublime to the ridiculous’. This show combines the too. Ridiculous? Yes! Sublime? Without a doubt!

You don’t need a big stage to create a spectacle. Chris Whittaker’s choreography shifts the walls outwards, playing with scale and creating deceptively big routines. Meticulously period yet innovative, it encapsulates the show’s energy and sense of fun. Shades of Jerome Robbins in no way eclipse Whittaker’s own individuality. Like every element of the show, familiarity and peculiarity dance side by side.

The finale number – a rousing ‘Nothing Bad’ – sums it up. “Cry-Baby, The Musical” is two hours of star-spangled fun. You’d be a cry-baby to miss it (I know…!). All I can say is ‘be there… or be square’.

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

CRY-BABY, THE MUSICAL

Arcola Theatre

★★★★★

“Feel-good is the understatement of the year where this show is concerned”

CRY-BABY, THE MUSICAL

Arcola Theatre

Reviewed on 12th March 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Charlie Flint

Previously reviewed at this venue:

CRY-BABY

CRY-BABY

CRY-BABY

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