'The Producers' debuts in Germany
Adolf Hitler is returning to the Berlin theater where he watched "The Merry Widow" during World War II, but this time he'll be on stage, singing "Heil Myself," swinging his hips and fluttering his eyelashes in Germany's first production of Mel Brooks's celebrated musical comedy "The Producers."
Some reviewers are saying the city's historic Admiralspalast theater, which until recently had a Führer's Box specifically built for Hitler, is taking a risk by staging a play featuring tap-dancing stormtroopers singing "Watch out Europe we're going on tour" in the former capital of the Third Reich.
But the manager of the Admiralspalast, Falk Walter, says it was high time that Berlin staged "The Producers", which opened on Broadway in 2001 and has been performed in many cities around the world since then. It opens here on May 15.
"I've been trying to get 'The Producers' for ages. If there's any city in the world where it should be performed, it's Berlin," Walter told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "For one, this town was the root of all the evil. And it also happens to be the most tolerant and exciting city in Germany."
The musical, based on a 1968 feature film written and directed by Brooks, is about a Broadway producer and his accountant who decide that they can earn more money by staging a flop than a hit. So they put on the worst, most inappropriate show they can find: "Springtime for Hitler," written by a Nazi pigeon-fancier who has taught his birds to lift their wings in the Hitler salute.
Disappointingly for them, the singing and dancing Führer turns out to be so comic that audiences applaud the show as a satirical masterpiece and it becomes a hit, so the heroes go to jail for tax fraud. Mel Brooks's award-winning 2001 Broadway musical spawned a remake of the movie in 2005...
Read entire article at Spiegel Online
Some reviewers are saying the city's historic Admiralspalast theater, which until recently had a Führer's Box specifically built for Hitler, is taking a risk by staging a play featuring tap-dancing stormtroopers singing "Watch out Europe we're going on tour" in the former capital of the Third Reich.
But the manager of the Admiralspalast, Falk Walter, says it was high time that Berlin staged "The Producers", which opened on Broadway in 2001 and has been performed in many cities around the world since then. It opens here on May 15.
"I've been trying to get 'The Producers' for ages. If there's any city in the world where it should be performed, it's Berlin," Walter told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "For one, this town was the root of all the evil. And it also happens to be the most tolerant and exciting city in Germany."
The musical, based on a 1968 feature film written and directed by Brooks, is about a Broadway producer and his accountant who decide that they can earn more money by staging a flop than a hit. So they put on the worst, most inappropriate show they can find: "Springtime for Hitler," written by a Nazi pigeon-fancier who has taught his birds to lift their wings in the Hitler salute.
Disappointingly for them, the singing and dancing Führer turns out to be so comic that audiences applaud the show as a satirical masterpiece and it becomes a hit, so the heroes go to jail for tax fraud. Mel Brooks's award-winning 2001 Broadway musical spawned a remake of the movie in 2005...