Review: ‘The Producers’ revels in its outrageousness

Can anybody mess up Mel Brooks’ guaranteed laugh-riot “The Producers,” the record-setting Tony Award winner about two Broadway con men trying to pull a fast one by producing the worst show on Broadway and pocketing the investors’ money when it closes on opening night?

Well, maybe the fictional Max Bialystock can. He always seems able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by backing turkeys like “Funny Boy,” the musical version of “Hamlet.”

But certainly not this energetic national tour cast that opened here at Century II for Theater League. While the satirical song lyrics are the clever draw, most of the laughs come from spot-on sight gags galore, from a pigeon giving a one-winged Hitler “heil” salute to a suspiciously over-endowed choreographer to a chorus line of little old ladies tapping with their walkers.

The 2001 musical, based on Brooks’ own 1968 film farce, is a guffaw-worthy romp that takes the rude, crude, double-take shtick of vaudeville and melds it beautifully with the glossy grandeur of Broadway’s Golden Age.

David Johnson and Richard Lafleur as the titular producers play off each other beautifully as well as provide separate comic entities. Johnson plays veteran Max Bialystock, a fast-talking, big-dreaming, good-hearted but morally shifty buffoon who hasn’t had a hit in years. He’s been reduced to romancing wealthy widows to back his shows.

Lafleur is Leo Bloom, his painfully shy, introverted and somewhat neurotic accountant who secretly wants to be a producer like Max. He discovers a legal quirk where producers could make more money with a flop than a hit. And he throws caution to the wind and lets Max talk him into breaking out of his shell while maybe breaking the law.

Johnson is big and bustling but light on his feet. He’s a sincerely insincere charmer whose face is like a billboard that hypes his every thought. He’s closer to the visceral rawness of Zero Mostel in the original movie than the smarmy conceit of Nathan Lane on Broadway.

Lafleur, who may remind you of Daniel Radcliff now that he’s outgrown Harry Potter, is just as neurotic as Gene Wilder in the original movie but a little smoother. He’s also more believable for me than the too-boyish Matthew Broderick of Broadway.

Jessica Ernest, looking like Jessica Rabbit in a tight white dress, is the epitome of idealized feminine pulchritude as Ulla, a Swedish showgirl who knows how to manipulate men like Max and Leo into slobbering slaves. She becomes their trophy receptionist while awaiting a part in a show. Ernest has a beautiful and powerful soprano for her signature “If You Got It, Flaunt It” number.

Thomas Slater has some slap-happy moments as Franz, the paranoid Nazi-in-hiding playwright whose egregious musical, “Springtime for Hitler,” is chosen to be Max and Leo’s big cash cow.

But the comic highlight has to be J. Ryan Carroll as Carmen Ghia, the “common law assistant” to the show-within-a-show’s flamboyant, cross-dressing director. The character is a walking, talking, mincing, lisping catalog of outrageous gay stereotypes, but Carroll makes sure he owns every gesture and pose by imparting dignity along with the hilarity.

This story was originally published January 20, 2016 at 2:19 PM with the headline "Review: ‘The Producers’ revels in its outrageousness."