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Thursday, September 19, 2002

By Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette Drama Critic

"Musical comedy, the most glorious words in the English language," rhapsodizes Julian Marsh, the fictional producer in "42nd Street."

	Lewis J. Stadlen as Max Bialystock (standing) meets his hysterical partner-to-be, Leo Bloom, played by Don Stephenson in the second scene of "The Producers." Visit a photo gallery of pictures from the play. (John Heller, Post-Gazette)

I almost believe that, but I've never understood it as I do now, fresh from the national tour of Mel Brooks' "The Producers." In the process of giving ample evidence that Marsh is right, Brooks turns him inside out. What Marsh praises is the expected balance of music, comedy, dance and romance, but what composer, lyricist and librettist Brooks produces is a robust variant in which the comedy swallows everything else.

Not that the music is slighted. You may be surprised -- Brooks not being a name you'd think to rank with Cole Porter or George Gershwin -- that his songs are as witty and tuneful as they are, with a fistful you can actually whistle on your way out of the theater even if you didn't already know a couple (from his 1968 movie) on the way in.

Still, it's the comedy that blows you away. "Musical comedy" barely says it. "The Producers" is as continually, deliciously funny as a musical comedy can be without evolving into some higher creation we haven't yet imagined.

I guess you can call it a throwback. Brooks' simple genius is to dovetail baggypants vaudeville with Busby Berkeley glitter and then prune and polish. The glitter is indubitably there -- as the hero, Max, would say, his golden showgirls do indeed have the curviest of this and the longest of that -- but it is heightened to a lampoon pitch, as are such other musical theater modes as "Fiddler," Jolson, Fred and Ginger and outright travesty.

	Review'The Producers" Where: PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh; Benedum Center When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays, through Sept. 29. Tickets: $25 - $66.50, 412-456-6666

The gags and vaudeville bits, though, are perfectly serious -- which is to say, cannily wrought into a masterclass in comedy. Those masters are Brooks and director/choreographer Susan Stroman, who apparently just dreamed up every possible funny detail and then staged them.

The inspired skit writing derives from Brooks' early experience on the Sid Caesar TV shows. Call Brooks a raunchy Jewish Peter Pan, happy in perpetual adolescence, giving his inner sophomore free rein but with the brains to edit the result. Stroman contributes seamless staging where even transitions refresh the comedy, and her choreography has plenty of the found-object flourish (most delectably, a fleet of walkers) that she's been known for since "Crazy for You."

The master comic on stage is Lewis J. Stadlen, whose Max is closer to the befuddled comic persona of Caesar than to the satiric provocateur of Nathan Lane. Stadlen also has some of the elephantine grace of Zero Mostel, but his benign charm is simply his. Max could have more bite, but then he couldn't enfold this whole happy occasion in his hug.

Don Stephenson's Leo starts as a perfect comic nerd, quickly accelerates into excessive Jerry Lewis hysteria, and then evolves into a sympathetic sidekick -- I swear he even manages to grow taller.

	Lewis J. Stadlen as Broadway producer Max Bialystock, center, remembers his glories as "The King of Broadway" in the opening scene of "The Producers" which kicked off its national tour last night in Pittsburgh. (John Heller, Post-Gazette)

In spite of what you may have heard, "The Producers" is not a two-man show. Fred Applegate's tubby Nazi playwright and pigeon fancier, the screamingly gay Roger de Bris, normally played by Lee Roy Reams but skillfully covered on opening night by Kevin Ligon, and Angie Schworer's architecturally astounding Swedish bombshell, Ulla, are all roles of comic substance.

If "Producers" really followed its heritage, Ulla would actually strip down toward that birthday suit she sings of, but the script's cheery tastelessness (so highly polished it proves tasty) goes only so far. The lechery is pure shtick. Still, one change for the tour is surprising: In his very first song, Max uses many of the seven words you can't say on television, but his climactic yell (on Broadway and CD), "who do you have to [bleep] to get a break in this town," has been changed to spare our middle-American sensitivities.

Not to worry -- those sensitivities get a good work-over anyway. Brooks piles on the gay stereotypes and, in equal opportunity mockery, makes fun of Jews, blacks, women, the Irish, the blind, even beauty and even Hitler -- the riskiest target, since how can evil be funny?

Well, it is.

This is one of the slickest tours we've seen here, with a tight ensemble of 22 (the same as on Broadway, they say) and full orchestral sound. Robin Wagner's sets retain their complexity and humor, while William Ivey Long's costumes are wonderfully excessive.

Nothing succeeds like excess, of course, as an old Borscht Belt comic like Brooks knows well. And beneath the comedy there's even romance -- the unlikely love story of Leo and Max finding kinship in the perfect scam.