‘The Producers’ goes hilariously right in Aurora

Vintage Theatre celebrates its 200th production with a gleeful, expertly played staging of Mel Brooks’ musical.

In the middle of Max and Leo’s first meeting on opening night of The Producers at Vintage Theatre, they ran into a little bump.

During one of Leo Bloom’s hysterical fits, Max Bialystock tries everything to calm him down. Water doesn’t work. So Max takes a swing at Leo, accidentally slams his hand into a door and sends Austin Terrell, the actor playing Max, tumbling to the ground as the set piece suddenly shifts.

Terrell immediately tossed off a quip, got back up and kept going without missing a beat.

That kind of recovery captures what makes Vintage’s The Producers work so well. Director Bernie Cardell and his cast understand that Mel Brooks’ musical requires total commitment to its slapstick, schmaltz, bad taste and theatrical excess.

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Austin Terrell, Evan Marquez and Andy Ray in a scene from The Producers at Vintage Theatre in Aurora, Colo. | Photo: RDGPhotography

As the characters eventually ask: “Where did we go right?”

For Vintage, the answer is practically everywhere. Its current production of The Producers is a hilarious, larger-than-life, joyfully irreverent and boisterously staged production of Brooks’ classic farce.

Selling the scheme

Based on Brooks’ 1967 film and adapted for Broadway in 2001 with Thomas Meehan, The Producers follows washed-up producer Max Bialystock and timid accountant Leo Bloom as they hatch a seemingly foolproof scheme: Raise too much money for a guaranteed flop, let it immediately close and pocket the difference.

And in our crazy world, where film studios can shelve completed movies for tax write-offs rather than release them, the premise remains absurdly durable.

Let’s get the only real negative out of the way: Vintage isn’t using a live band.

The recorded tracks create some shakiness. During “The King of Broadway,” Cardell and choreographer Adrianne Hampton stage a funny Fiddler on the Roof-inspired sendup, but the ensemble’s rhythmic stomping and clapping don’t always lock into the accompaniment. Terrell also has to fight the stops and starts of “Betrayed” to stay in time. That may settle as the run continues, but it is one trade-off of prerecorded music in a show so dependent on comic timing.

Other than those brief moments when the machinery shows, this is a splendid production that barely lets up. Terrell has the schmaltzy New York bravado Max requires, playing him as a man capable of turning even abject failure into an opportunity.

Austin Terrell as Max Bialystock and Andy Ray as Leo Bloom in The Producers. | Photo: RDGPhotography

Andy Ray provides an ideal counterweight as Leo. Ray beautifully undersells the accountant’s pathetic nervousness, especially during his hysterical breakdown over his beloved blue blanket. Together, Terrell and Ray make the lunatic scheme at the center of The Producers feel almost reasonable — at least until they begin assembling the worst Broadway musical imaginable.

How to make a flop

Evan Marquez leans completely into Franz Liebkind’s thick accent and absurd Nazi patriotism, while his rooftop flock of puppet pigeons delivers one of the evening’s funniest visual reveals. Kris Graves milks every flamboyant line as Roger De Bris, with Lucas Barta matching him flourish for flourish as Carmen Ghia.

The musical number “Keep it Gay” in The Producers at Vintage Theatre in Aurora, Colo. | Photo: RDGPhotography

Then Helen Anne Horecky arrives as Ulla and nearly steals the production.

She commands the stage during “When You’ve Got It, Flaunt It,” but some of her best laughs come from going smaller. Horecky deadpans the musical’s metatheatrical jokes about intermission and stage blocking so casually that the punchlines sneak up on you.

Cardell also keeps the sprawling musical moving efficiently through Vintage’s intimate space. Scenic designer Brandon Bill’s red show curtain and economical set pieces help Cardell move quickly among Max’s office, Franz’s rooftop, Roger’s home and the musical’s many other locations.

Go big or go home

All of that builds toward the spectacle everyone is waiting for: “Springtime for Hitler.” Vintage does not disappoint.

Tap-dancing Nazis give way to Graves’ campy Hitler, around whom the ensemble eventually forms a rotating swastika. The audience roared as each gag further deflated the Nazis’ self-importance. Brooks’ joke remains unmistakable: Fascists are reduced to vain, ridiculous fools in a blisteringly satirical spectacle.

A scene from The Producers at Vintage Theatre in Aurora, Colo. | Photo: RDGPhotography

Smaller gags land just as hard. During Leo and Ulla’s “That Face,” their increasingly suggestive couch choreography includes an unexpected character popping out, which is exactly the kind of stupid, perfectly timed joke Cardell’s production excels at.

Max and Leo set out to manufacture a flop. Vintage has done the opposite.