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August 16, 2003The Producers...
My girlfriend and I saw "The Producers" at the Pantages in Los Angeles last night. It was a funny enough show, but not the side-splitting epitome of borsch belt humor I’d been led to expect. The first half, in particular, felt as if it could have benefited from a tightening up. It was often, for lack of a better term, self-indulgent and hit-and-miss. The "Springtime for Hitler" sequence was hilarious, but you have to sit through a lot of preparation to reach it.
Also, Martin Short just wasn’t getting the job done for me. The guy turned 53 this year. While he’s not looking long in the tooth, I’m having trouble buying anybody as the naïve innocent once they’ve reached—and passed!—that half-century mark. Let me put it this way: he’s nine years older than Jason Alexander, who way playing the considerably older of the two characters. I realize they wanted name recognition for both of the main characters, but I think Jason Alexander’s pull would have been sufficient for them to go out and cast the best young unknown they could find as their post-Broderick Leo Bloom. Gene Wilder was only 35 when he played Leo Bloom in the 1968 movie from which the musical was taken, and you could go even younger than that—early thirties or late twenties, say.
Speaking of age, while I appreciate the fact that the Pantages is 73 years old, it’s time to concede to the reality that audiences may have grown in height and girth since then and redesign the seating accordingly. According to the Pantages website, "The Pantages, first to last, was designed for maximum audience comfort, with over 40% of the interior space devoted to public areas, lobbies, lounges and restrooms." That sounds great, until you realize that you’re usually not watching the show from a public area, lobby, lounge, or restroom. You’re watching the show from a seat—a seat that, in my case, left my knees wedged up against the back of the seat in front of me.
The "Springtime for Hitler" show-within-the-show was a hoot, as was the nod to "The Mikado" during the Hitler auditions, and the statuesque blonde Swede was nice eye-candy, but "The Producers" as a whole didn’t deserve 12 Tony awards last year. Even taking into account the awards won by specific actors and actresses no longer affiliated with the show, it still walked away with more kudos than were—in my humble opinion—strictly deserved.
Note: Looking at my program from last night, I see that we did have some of the Broadway cast in last night's show--namely, Gary Beach, who won the Featured Actor Tony Award in 2001 for playing the show-within-the-show's flamingly gay director who takes over the Hitler role at the last minute. Okay, so that Tony was deserved. This production also boasts the original Ulla, although we saw her understudy (who rocked pretty hard).
Posted by patrick at August 16, 2003 11:46 AM
CommentsThank you! Chinese Apes.
Posted by: Yellow Monkey at March 2, 2005 03:57 AM
Thank you! Chinese Apes.
Posted by: Yellow Monkey at March 2, 2005 03:58 AM
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