(seen at the performance on 22nd December 2024)
The monkey remembers the frantic excitement back in 2004 when, after a 3 and a half year wait, it got to see this smash Broadway hit adaptation of one of its favourite films. It also recalls the 5 stars it gave the lavish “great big Broadway show.”
At the Menier Chocolate Factory, they have produced the antithesis. Twelve people in addition to the six lead characters. A vast cast by Menier (or, frankly any theatre in London, these days) standards - yet about half the size of the original cast. Enough to carry the show? Well, it’s a brave attempt.
Andy Nyman likewise takes on the legends of Zero Mostel and Nathan Lane as sleazy producer Max Bialystock, who raises cash from little old ladies and embraces the theory that if he raises more than he needs and produces a flop, he’ll make a fortune.
For those used to a tall, corpulent Max who dominates proceedings with a loud voice and lightning New York wit, Nyman is going to seem miscast at first. By the middle of the second half, he proves his position, “Betrayed” and “’Till Him” delivered with feeling.
Marc Antolin as mousy accountant turned ratty producer Leo Bloom is far more successful from the start. Nicely out-of-control of his nerves to begin with, “I Wanna Be a Producer” turns his life around first time, “Leo Goes to Rio” the second...
... Ulla (Joanna Woodward) making a husband of him with her direct Swedish ways. No “office toy,” this is a lady who may have been taught that “When You’ve Got It, Flaunt It” but she decides when, where, how and for whom. Woodward also sings up a storm while finding a surprisingly soft empathy for all.
Supporting rogues are also excellent. Harry Morrison as Nazi-turned-playwright Franz Liebkind is a riot of Bavarian racism, bringing the house down with his three big songs.
Trevor Ashley and Raj Ghatak as Broadway’s worst and campest director Roger De Bris and acolyte Carmen Ghia are a double act matched by nobody – in all senses of the word.
Ashley excels only in directing bile, mostly at Ghatak, who spits it right back. Too many fun moments to mention, but catching Max and Leo in their office is one of the best set-ups in the show.
Choreographer Lorin Lattaro works the ensemble hard, staging the iconic “Little Old Lady Land” act one closer and also massive “Springtime For Hitler” with imagination in the small space. The team respond with Zimmer-frame crossovers and stiff-arm movements par excellence.
The only fault is in Liebkind’s birds. Annoyingly positioning the puppets to give away a visual joke way too early, both Lattaro and designer Scott Pask should perhaps have questioned whether the budget might have been better spent staging that big payoff joke as it was originally.
Otherwise, Pask is an able accomplice with the sliding safe and wall-bars proving versatile when curtains and signs are added. Play Richard Howell’s spotlights on velvet and we are almost on Broadway... the scale of Borough Broadway... but close enough...
Patrick Marber’s direction does not quite run the show at New York pace, and fails to find the “Yiddishkeit” (Jewish warmth) within it at times. Without spectacle to distract instead, this element would have been important in establishing the right atmosphere far more effectively.
With a second act stronger than the first, it is satisfying enough. As the monkey knew going in, this is a bit of a “one joke show.” If you have seen it once, the kick of novelty is not there – and this introduces little to freshen it.
It is a quality show even if you do know the jokes, but, shorn of the much-required big cast and scenery, the monkey did ponder whether a West End life after this run would be appropriate. They really could lose their shirts, it worried, but maybe that is the plan all along...
4 stars.