After having played Max Bialystock for almost two years in the French version of Producers Directed by Alexis Michalik at the Théâtre de Paris, Serge Postigo reprises his role in Quebec, thanks to Gestev, in a show that is as funny as it is exciting, for which he also directed, translated and adapted.
In 2001, the American Mel Brooks transformed his film, released in 1967, into a musical comedy which starred Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. Recipient of a record 12 Tony Awards, The Producers will run at the St. James Theater until 2007. The work is a canonical example of a self-referential musical, in other words a musical that exposes the development of a musical. The action takes place in New York in 1959. Max Bialystock, once the king of Broadway, collects chess. When Léopold Bloom, the shy accountant, makes the producer realize that it is possible, by playing with figures, to make more money with a huge fiasco than with great success, the tandem decides to give birth to the biggest flop in history. Obviously, it won’t go exactly as they planned.
With The producers, Mel Brooks takes pleasure in tackling thorny subjects, but always in the mode of exaggeration, accumulation, excess and overkill. Here, thanks to Olympic-level caricatures, everyone is having fun, starting with Jews, Nazis and gays. If it were not done with such derision, it would be deeply uncomfortable. But Serge Postigo finds the right tone, a clever mixture of casualness and irreverence, benevolence and irony, so that the result turns out to be irresistibly comical. What has aged less well is everything surrounding the famous “ casting couch “. Even though we know that it’s not new for producers to make sexual advances during their auditions, we may not be quite ready to laugh out loud about it.
A vibrant tribute to vaudeville
In a simple but effective decor, a design which for once makes very little use of video projections, the director, with his choreographer Steve Bolton and his musical director Guillaume St-Laurent, orchestrate flamboyant numbers, group scenes relentless. The whole thing is a vibrant tribute to vaudeville, burlesque, cabaret, in short to a certain golden age of American entertainment. Cultivating spatial and temporal inconsistencies, the Quebec adaptation of dialogues and songs sometimes leaves you speechless, but it also happens that you are frankly amused by certain winks.
From the six main performers to the ten ensemble members, not a single weak link! In this role which calls upon his legendary charisma and his innate sense of comedy, Serge Postigo is like a fish in water. In the Leopold suit, Tommy Joubert is simply brilliant. Born to do musical comedy, he gives to his character – in such madness, you have to do it! — nuances that move. The Frenchwoman Marianne Orlowski is a captivating Ulla, Benoît Finley a hilarious Roger, Jean-Luke Côté a truculent Carmen and Thiery Dubé a very convincing Franz. The success of this show is no mystery, far from it, it is mainly due to its exceptional cast.