THE BEST OF TASTELESSNESS
It’s always special when the small Menier’s latest musical proves so perfect, so original in interpretation but faithful to its classic core that it can triumphantly explode into a big West End house. It’s happened again with Patrick Marber’s glorious rendering of the Mel Brooks classic: ensemble nearly doubled, players the same, Scott Pask’s ingeniously flexible set and Lorin Latarro’s revamped choreography filling the space with glee. Even with a few new visual jokes. At least, I think they were new: so artfully detailed is Patrick Marber’s production, so fresh and fast-moving with never an awkward transition that you’re lucky if you catch them all.
It is, as ever, a hymn to the human necessity for benevolent, mocking outrage and cheeky offence, with heart. In this time of ugly ignorant antisemitism on the streets, I particularly responded to l the expanded wild glee of the opening number “King of Broadway”, as Andy Nyman’s Bialystock capers to klezmer sounds in a crowd of exuberant Jews, a tribute to old Broadway’s triumphs and disasters and recoveries born of that community. That warmed the heart.
Then on it roared, joyful, headlong and full-hearted. What was firmly grasped by the great Mel Brooks (with Thomas Meehan for the musical) is that for all their horror Nazis ARE funny : all that preening pomposity ,blind hero worship, ersatz folksiness. Rich thwarted old ladies in leopardprint and endlessly willing Swedish divas are funny too. So is over-camp gay culture and the desperate ambition and bitter disappointments of Broadway show-people . Accountants are also funny. And – loud gasps from the be-kind mafia – so is poor Leo’s anxiety disorder. It doesn’t mean all these things are not also deserving of the usual gloomy respect they get in other plays. It just means that if you don’t sometimes laugh at them, and at yourself, you’re barely human. So rejoice at the cleansing mirth of this legendary musical, just as lovely as before in this bigger space, with almost double the ensemble giving it additional pizazz.
Andy Nyman is an amiable manic Bialystock, and Marc Antolin adorable, clutching the blue-blanket of reassurance as a Leo who grows up beautifully to his final moment of heroism in the courtroom, and earns his hat. As Marber has observed, it’s a bit of a love story between the two men, never mind Ulla. Harry Morrison’s Liebkind is if possible even more ridiculous than before: you may dream all night about his leather-shorts and chorus of pigeons. The camp frolics of Trevor Ashley as Roger de Bris – and especially his teamful of theatrical joke staff, dig that choreographer – are an extra pleasure after the earnest RSC gay-porn muscle-flexing playing up the road at Born with Teeth. Joanna Woodward’s Ulla is a rose amid these troublesome thorns, deadpan comic and a hell of a belter: her intermission rearranging of Bialystock’s dingy office gets a shock a laugh of its own. Latarro’s adaptation of the old Stroman choreography is witty all the way. And goodness, it moves fast, never a gaping seam or moment of ennui.
Once again, as at the Menier, five mice plus a dancing one as a tribute to the ensemble and swing whose lightning costume-changes never miss a beat….
garricktheatre to 21 January
rating 5 plus dancemouse
theatreCat 