‘I said there was no reason to make it a musical!' Mel Brooks on The Producers' West End transfer

The Guardian

01-03-2025

The Menier Chocolate Factory has announced that its acclaimed production of The Producers is to transfer to the West End this autumn. Having sold out its three-month run at the 180-seat London venue before first night, it is set to move to the Garrick theatre. But according to its original creator Mel Brooks, the musical might never have happened at all.
The 98-year-old Brooks has told the Guardian he was initially reluctant to adapt his 1967 movie for the stage. Only through the persistence of a producer did he relent.
'David Geffen called me every day. I said, 'David, it's a perfectly good little movie. I won the Academy Award for my screenplay. It's been honoured and saluted enough. There's no reason to make it a musical.' Then the next day, he called me again. He never stopped calling me. And finally, I said, 'Well, he's not a dumb guy, so maybe there is something.''
Opening on Broadway in 2001, The Producers went on to win 12 Tonys. The New York Times called it a 'sublimely ridiculous spectacle' – a sentiment echoed by UK critics in 2004 and again when director Patrick Marber staged the first major London revival last year.
'Marber is a terrific director and is perfect for it,' said Brooks, who co-wrote the show with the late Thomas Meehan. Brooks also wrote the score, featuring Springtime for Hitler.
'Tom was sweet as sugar and very proper as opposed to me who was very improper. In jokes and language, I was the bad boy. I'm blamed for all that semi-dirty stuff, but that was really secretly Tom Meehan – I'm spilling the beans!'
The production will transfer to the Garrick theatre, where the author's horror spoof, Young Frankenstein, picked up five-star reviews in 2017. Staying with the show are key cast members Marc Antolin, Trevor Ashley, Raj Ghatak, Andy Nyman, Harry Morrison and Joanna Woodward.
'I'm very proud of that production at the Chocolate Factory and I'm so happy we're going back to the Garrick,' said Brooks.
In Marber's production, Nyman plays Max Bialystock, a failing impresario who sets out to stage a Broadway flop. He and his accountant, Leopold Bloom (Antolin), hire a neo-Nazi playwright, an incompetent director and a useless lead actor in the hope of closing the show and keeping their investors' money. They assume no audience would tolerate a sympathetic paean to Hitler and would have it shut down, clearing the way for them to make their fortune.
Brooks, who was born in 1926 and served as a combat engineer in the second world war ('I mostly ducked'), has seen nearly a century's worth of authoritarian rulers come and go. 'I like the 'come and go' – especially the go,' he joked.
Now he lives in a country where Nazi salutes appear to have been given at large political rallies. 'It's something we hope will pass and go its way, just like Hitler and his people did go their way.'
He said he believes laughter is a powerful weapon against tyranny. 'They're gifted with a kind of flagrant rhetoric, but once you make fun of them and you drag them down with comedy, you win. When you can get people to laugh at them, you win.'
It is an attitude shaped by his experience as a young man performing comedy routines at Jewish resorts in the Catskill mountains. 'We who have worked in the borscht belt know that comedy is the answer. It's magical, it pays the rent and also we learn stealing because we steal jokes from each other – recklessly, not even thinking about it.'
Public booking for The Producers opens on 5 March. Previews run from 30 August and booking will run to 21 February 2026.