WATCHING "THE PRODUCERS" IN BERLIN

When German friends saw Mel Brooks’s famous slapstick musical some years ago in London, they found it extremely amusing but rued that it would never come to Germany. “The Germans came off so badly,” they explained.

The German version of "The Producers" has just opened in Berlin, and the location could not be better. The Admiralspalast, a newly reconstructed and refurbished variety theatre near Friedrichstrasse station, was once an operetta theatre that Hitler himself liked to visit.

The show earned a lukewarm reception in Vienna, where it ran for eight months. At a press meeting on May 15th, Nigel West, the associate director, was anxious to point out that those who saw the show enjoyed it very much. Cornelius Obonya, who co-stars as Max Bialystock, the show's bombastic impresario, explained the absence of enthusiasm in Vienna as a result of the country's many “honest and serious admirers” of Adolf Hitler, who may have been offended by the way he is mocked on stage. He is hoping for a more liberal audience in Berlin.

It seems his wish has been granted. At the musical's premiere I found myself in the middle of a crowd of people who could not stop laughing. The scene that first prompted me to join the chorus was when Bialystock and Leo Bloom, his producing partner, visit Franz Liebkind, a diehard Bavarian Nazi and author of “Springtime for Hitler–A day with Adolf and Eva in Berchtesgaden”. The producers, keen on a Broadway flop (in order to pocket the cash of their investors), presume staging Liebkind's script is a safe-bet, and their exchange is hilarious. I wasn’t quite sure what made me laugh harder: the Nazi caricature or the Bavarian stereotype, with Liebkind in leather trousers, knee stockings and strong Bavarian dialect. (“Prussians”, as Bavarians call all Germans north of Munich, often make fun of Bavarians, and vice versa.) A passionate pigeon fancier, Liebkind even teaches his pigeons to do the Hitler salute with their right wings. This is all very funny.

"The Producers" is a fast-paced spectacle, full of catchy songs, big dance numbers and wonderfully absurdist dialogue. What makes it work is the way it spares no one. Everyone comes off badly: a ridiculous Hitler, a Bavarian Nazi, poncy gay people, grabby Jewish theatre producers, old horny widows and boring book accountants.

But there was one scene I had trouble with. It was when storm troopers in Nazi uniforms with swastika armbands goose-step on stage singing “Springtime for Hitler and winter for France and Poland!” I just could not bring myself to clap. Reassuringly, I was not the only one. To me this scene was no longer making fun of Hitler but fun of the war (this music number features paper-mâché tanks and some noisy bullet shots). I worried about how Polish or French guests in the audience might feel.

It was a clever move on the part of the show's producers to replace the swastika on the red banners outside the theatre with images of pretzels and sausages. Why not for the armbands on stage? Still, the musical's opening nights earned standing ovations. It remains to be seen whether Berlin's audience will continue to be so liberal.

"The Producers", The Admiralspalast, Berlin, until July 19th 2009

~ CORNELIA RUDAT

Picture credit: Oliver Hadji