Summertime for Hitler at the Hollywood Bowl

My childhood pal, Leo, and his wife Connie  joined my friends last weekend at the Hollywood Bowl for their annual musical presentation.  This year, Mel Brooks' "The Producers" was dusted off for revival.  Given that the original only came out eleven years ago, you wouldn't expect that much dust to have accumulated.  You'd be surprised, though.   Some of the original gags got a little shopworn a week after it opened. 

Nevertheless, Leo was astonished by the evening.  He thought we were just going to see some selected numbers from the show.   He had no idea that we were seeing essentially about 90% of the production as produced on Broadway.

Yeah, I'm amazed, too.  As I was last year when they gave us a remarkable rendition of "Hairspray."  And several summers back when they put on a terrific revival of "South Pacific" with Reba McIntire and Brian Stokes Mitchell.  And on and on and on.  It's usually one of the highlight weekends of the whole Bowl summer.

Frankly, I've always been astounded by the Hollywood Bowl's ability to mount a full-blown musical comedy every summer.  Oddly enough, for all the work that's needed, they only put the show on for three nights.  And I'm thinking that's pretty much the amount of rehearsal time they're allotted.  Still, almost miraculously, they pull it off every year.  Sure, there are microphones that don't work, awkward scene changes, and line gaffs.  But, it's live and it's real and we don't argue these days with any level of spontaneity. 

Such was the case with "The Producers."  When the original content is as strong as the Mel Brooks musical is, you can overlook bad casting, missed opportunities, and odd choices in direction.  A great show has an innate ability to rise above it all and this edition of "The Producers" did just that.

Now, I've seen the show in a variety of venues several times.  I saw the original on Broadway right after it opened with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.  Several years later, I saw the Los Angeles production with Jason Alexander and Martin Short, which was, in my humble opinion, a much better and funnier production.  The Bowl send-up, with Richard Kind and Jesse Tyler Ferguson as the renowned Bialystock and Bloom, falls somewhere in between the two.  Soaring over the incredibly overrated Lane and Broderick, but falling a little bit short of the sheer professionalism essayed by Alexander and Short.

Still, with material like this, you're almost guaranteed to shine regardless. 

Admittedly, a lot of the humor embedded in "The Producers," whether it be the original movie with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, the Broadway musical, or the dreadful movie version of the musical, is pure Borscht Belt.  Jokes as old as the trunk in your attic and most of the gags may have been stored there since Herbert Hoover.  But, it is Mel Brooks and he's consistently and wonderfully an equal opportunity offender, regardless of how much you groan at the last line.  Blacks, gays, Jews, actors, the blind, the old lady, and the Swedes.  All of them get skewered in "The Producers" and Mel is a great reminder of how political correctness has killed comedy in America.  Brooks is one of those oddities who gets a hall pass when it comes to taking potshots at those of different nationalities, races, and/or afflictions.  Sadly, he's the exception and not the rule.

Now, last Saturday at the Bowl, there was a very prominent gay presence to see "The Producers."  It's a musical comedy from Broadway so that's almost mandatory attendance from the denizens of West Hollywood.  Plus co-star Jesse Tyler Ferguson, fresh from his "Modern Family" contract squabble, plays one-half of a gay couple on TV.  Plus, he's out of the closet in real life.  This is a homosexual hat trick for a lot of the Bowl audience.   And they ate it up.  You could tell who was doing the hooting and the hollering every time Jesse had a musical number.   And the "ooohs" and "aahhs" when he had to kiss Ulla were straight from your last bridal shower. 

Meanwhile, there is an awful lot of mincing and sashaying from the gay characters of Roger DeVries and Carmen Ghia, perfectly recreated by Broadway originators Gary Beach and Roger Bart.  Paul Lynde or Alan Sues might blush or bristle, but the Bowl audience loved every offensive moment of it all. 

Yet, earlier in the week, some executive at Chick-Fil-A comes out with a public statement denouncing gay marriage and a lot of the same audience is outraged.  He hates us.  The bastard.  How dare he?  So, it's okay for Mel Brooks to play upon stereotypes, but it's not for some guy who is simply exercising his right of free speech?   Makes you wonder about the latent hypocrisy of it all.  You can't laugh at one moment of "hate" and be outraged at the next.  You might argue that it's not the same thing.  I would argue back that this rebuttal is splitting the smallest of hairs. 

But, I digress....

"The Producers" we saw at the Bowl was shepherded by the original Broadway director/creator Susan Strohman and she did the best she could do adapting the choreography to match the odd contortions of the Bowl stage.   And, so that the Bowl could meet its neighborhood curfew, two numbers were cut out of the second act.  Nobody noticed, which means that the first version of the Broadway show might have been too long anyway. 

Richard Kind had played Bialystock on Broadway and he obviously displayed a familiarity and comfort with the role, while Ferguson, despite his love affair with half of the patrons, seemed to be struggling to find a common ground somewhere between Gene Wilder and Matthew Broderick.  He essentially wound up being neither and, ultimately, didn't own the part at the Bowl. 

The smartest move by these producers was to bring back the aforementioned Beach and Bart, who stole the show as they did eleven years ago.  Beach won the Supporting Tony and hasn't missed a beat in giving us that same glory a decade later.  Dane Cook was a surprisingly welcome addition as Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind, especially since the always unwelcome Will Ferrell turned him into such a humorless mess in the recent movie version of the musical.

As Ulla, Rebecca Romjin was essentially eye candy except for all those aforementioned patrons who were too busy cheering on Jesse Tyler Ferguson.  Her main claim to show business fame is once sleeping regularly with John Stamos, so you certainly don't expect much from her here.  The good news is that she delivered on that expectation.   We didn't get much from her, since the major accomplishment on her acting resume is height.

Yes, they all scuffled a bit.  But, once again, I marvel at the Bowl's ability to do this every summer.  It's a much better production than some of the crap you'd see on Broadway right now.  Of course, there is the superlative content at its core.  Mel Brooks may never have this kind of stage success again.  Indeed, his attempts to turn "Young Frankenstein" were a colossal failure.  But, at least for now and for the ages, we have "The Producers" to behold every time it's brought out of mothballs. 

It's rare, but, no matter how hard some folks try,  there are some things you just can't louse up.  I'd tell you to go see "The Producers," but, oh, well, too late.  It was three performances and toodles.

Dinner last night:  Meatloaf at the Cheesecake Factory.