Need a laugh or a hundred? Look no further than The Producers at the Garrick Theatre, which updates Mel Brooks’ classic film – and the original Broadway production by Brooks – with absolute glee in production directed by Patrick Marber. Given the trigger-happy times we live in, with extreme voices wanting to jump on anything anybody says and twist it to their own ends, you’d think there might be some nervousness about some elements of The Producers; the whole two Jewish theatre hustlers putting on a Nazi play to make some insurance cash thing. Far from it. In fact, the show triples-down on offensiveness with such gusto that it’s impossible to be offended by it. Though pity those who arrive unawares.
“We have had people come in who do not know the story, and you just hear these shockwaves when I’m reading the script and say, Springtime for Hitler,” says Andy Nyman, who stars as Max Bialystock in the show.
Hang on, let us try that again: says Andy Nyman, who absolutely destroys the place like a whirling, greasy comedy machine as Max Bialystock. That’s better. Because nothing about The Producers is timid, and certainly not Nyman’s performance which involves a visible determination to make sure every last person in the theatre is doing some serious ugly laughing.
He says, “It’s such a ride. If a joke doesn’t land, within 90 seconds you’ve got 4 more. It’s the happiest show I’ve ever done. The booking has extended to September of next year, so audiences are flocking, every night its packed - and you hear this journey of shock.”
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We will recap, to be on the safe side. The Producers musical is about Max, a producer down on his luck who meets an accountant called Leopold Bloom (Marc Antolin), who posits Max could make more money with a flop show than a hit if he cooks the books right. Max’s eyes light up at the potential here and the two search for the most offensive show they can find, stumbling across Springtime For Hitler, written by, yes, a German fascist with a pigeon fixation (Franz Liebkind, played by Harry Morrison. Throw in flamboyant director Roger DeBris (Trevor Ashley), Ulla the Swedish secretary (Joanna Woodward) and musical numbers filled with Nazi iconography, high camp and a chorus of grannies on Zimmer frames, and, well, you will be hooting at the outrageousness.
“We have to lock away the swastikas every night,” shrugs Nyman, “We can’t leave these massive Nazi flags lying around.”
“On paper, it is so not OK,” he continues, “But what makes it palatable is Mel Brooks' kindness. There's nothing mean spirited about it. There’s a feeling around like, ‘oh, you can't say that anymore.’ Instead, here there's a refreshing, ‘we can’. It's OK. No one's gonna die. It's funny if it's funny. We’re just dealing with archetypes and spearing them with kindness. That's the magic of it.”
Nyman saw the Broadway production with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick – “One of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen, they distilled New York into those characters” – but the 1967 film starring Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel was already rooted in his heart: “It made such an impact on me as a kid growing up, watching that film with my parents. It’s one of these few things that are so rooted in Jewishness, and I’d see my dad just crying with laughter at this thing.”
The challenge for Nyman when he took it on, was to avoid both Mostel and Lane’s versions. How he did this was rooted in his approach to taking on Tevya in Fiddler on the Roof at in Trevor Nunn’s 2019 production, for which Nyman won Olivier and Evening Standard awards.
“I think of Max as Tevye’s grandson. They’re flipsides of the Jewish immigrant experience,” he says, “Productions I’ve seen of that show can be really annoying, because I find it very Jewy. People doing Jewish acting, or played like we’re the tragic victims, I despise all that. Fiddler is one of he few Jewish pieces of art in wider acceptance, but what really mattered to me was that it wasn’t played as this huge Jewish show. It’s all in the writing, we don’t need to do anything. It just needs to be the truth of a man who’s working his nuts off, his wife trying to keep the home together, all with no money and five daughters. It’s a fucking nightmare, you’re exhausted, you’re trying to work within the confines of the pillars of your religion that are crumbling. The truth of it is what mattered to me.
And with The Producers, the route I wanted to go was the truth of it. It was the dirty fingernails, what’s under the gloss of it and what I relate to about it. Here’s a man who has been a giant success but who has lost everything and is living in his office. He has to be gigolo to pay the rent. He's this tragic figure, he's also all of us because he still aspires to do good things.
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Going back to what I said about the Tevye thing, I sort of imagined if they'd survived and got out of Anatevka and not gone to Warsaw where they think they're gonna be safe, but had the good sense to get on a boat and go to New York. Maybe one of his kids would have survived and they're in the little Lower East Side shtetl that was the Jewish society there. And his grandson grows up and there's all the Yiddish theater and that and they into into what is Max.
The difference is the Jewishness of Tevye is a sort of wear a browbeaten, weary trudge of ‘How do I get from this day to that day? But the the Jewishness of Max is that immigrant experience which is of New York, of America at that time, where everything's an opportunity. ‘I can do this!’ It's on the front foot not the back.’
I realise I've just exploded everything but that's kind of my thing.”
Indeed it is. Nyman is not just a natural raconteur, expanding on these stories, doing impressions and spilling beans everywhere – “this is the dirtiest cast of people I’ve ever worked with, it’s shockingly hysterical” - he’s also written two books on acting to demystify the techniques (The Golden Rules of Acting and More Golden Rules of Acting) and is active in the magic world, where his work with Derren Brown has delighted at exposing old tricks as well as creating new ones. Nyman admires the type of big old school showbiz characters in the show, and is one himself, with his garrulous nature, his gold jewellery, and sheer chutzpah. Max isn’t a big stretch for him, let’s face it.
“Well, if I look at my career, I've not done vanilla. I’ve spent my career playing extremes, either people who are killers or larger than life. But it's important to me to make sure the roots go deep, because then you can go huge.”
The thrilling thing about these big characters is that they make things happen. He’s seen it.
“You think Max is a force of nature? Fuck me. I’ve worked with American directors who are like typhoons. If they're pitching to you, you'd green light it just to get them out the room. You get sucked up in their belief. That's the other thing about Max that I love and that I think makes him loveable, is the power of his belief. ‘We'll make it work, what's the worst that can happen? It's gonna work!’ I definitely have that side to me.”
Nevertheless, these folk are something of a dying breed in today’s world.
“If you look at the way things are commissioned and made now, it's the very opposite of that. Everything is by committee. Everyone is trying to hedge your bets so it makes money. Everything's about, ‘I wasn't the one who signed off on this’, protecting themselves. Everyone's shit scared they're gonna lose their jobs.
It used to be someone at the top, who would sit there and go, yeah, there's a check, go make it. That's what the BBC used to be like, that's what ITV used to be like. It was someone taking responsibility. That's what's also adorable about Max is you go through this power of his belief, not being browbeaten by failure, the embodiment of what the human spirit should be.”
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This is key to the warm heart running underneath the show and which makes it truly feelgood fare. This is also expressed in Max’s relationship with Leo, which is tender in a way you don’t often see: “Patrick has teased that out in this version.It's very rare to see a show that is genuinely about male friendship and love between two men. It's gorgeous watching someone who's scared to death of life battered into realising it's gonna be OK. Leo grows through him and Max ends up saying, ‘I've never met a man I ever trusted till him.’ It's a love story.”
Such are the depths of Mel Brooks’ writing. But of course the satire matters too. Nick Curtis noted in his Standard review that press night was taking place with the far right rally in town for a rally, and against this backdrop, the show felt particularly needed, as both fascist lampooning and a jolly tonic.
“We’re not going, ‘Hey guys, there's something really important about this show’,” says Nyman, “It just speaks for itself because that is the brilliance of the satire is. With such kindness, it just bursts those bubbles again and again and again and says laugh at it because that is the best weapon.”
Nyman finishes by reflecting on what he hopes the show is doing for people, which again comes from a place of personal insight:
“I've had a very tough time personally this year with a death in my family which has rocked us. And I have a lot of people at the stage door say, I cannot thank you enough, it's the first time I've been out since I started treatment, or we've had a terrible time, and to just laugh for three hours and turn your brain off…
The world is a bit shit at the moment and it's a bit scary, and also, nights are getting darker, it's getting colder, and there's something about being in a packed theater where you are rocking, crying with laughter, let alone some of the most amazing songs. Very often I think theatre is too expensive, too pretentious, too boring. I guarantee it's none of those things. It is worth every penny.”
The Producers is at the Garrick Theatre until 19 September 2026
