April 2, 2004

the producers on broadway (actually, on deadrick)

Last night, Lydia and I got to see The Producers at TPAC. If you are a fan of broadway, or at all a fan of the original movie, find out when it's playing near you and run buy your tickets now. The night we saw the touring cast in Nashville, one of the understudies played the Leo Bloom (Matthew Broderick / Gene Wilder) part. We didn't notice. It seemed like he and the Max Bialystock (Nathan Lane / Zero Mostel) were taking parts of both of their predecessors' performances, but making it their own. Their performance was stellar. And, the rest of the cast, from Ulla to Franz Liebkind to Carmen Giya to Roger De Bris all nailed their characters. Interestingly, Lorenzo St. DuBois is missing from the musical. He was probably dropped because the story is now set in 1959 and would have been pretty anachronistic.

Aside from dropping the F-bomb in the first act, the language is not too over the top, but Mel Brooks is definately an equal-opportunity offender. The songs are singable and memorable, and almost every line is hilarious without having to be a "one-liner."

To top it all off, this morning, I found out, that Mel Brooks is planning to make a movie about his show about a movie about a show. The guy is genius.

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