Spring(time) Forward

It’s the musical that puts the “hit!” in Hitler. “The Producers,” a monument to the civility, restraint and high-mindedness long associated with the name Mel Brooks, is a glorious, shameless expansion of the 1968 Brooks movie, the one that gave the world “Springtime for Hitler” (a fine thing), Gene Wilder’s panic attacks (even finer), and Zero Mostel mugging in frequent close-up (a little less fine).

It gave the world those things, and lo--really lo--it keeps on giving. In retrospect, any film graced with the song lyric, “C’mon Germans . . . go into your dance!” was destined for Broadway. Destiny was met Wednesday night at the St. James Theatre.

With Brooks serving as co-librettist (alongside Thomas Meehan), composer of music and lyrics and, yes, as a producer, this show succeeds--even with a largely unremarkable score and a saggy final half-hour--for many reasons, beginning with Brooks’ satyr-like spirit.

The best reason, though, is Nathan Lane. Though he shares above-the-title billing with Matthew Broderick, whose Leo Bloom nails plenty of laughs and sings very pleasingly, Lane is the nerve center of this enterprise.

As Max Bialystock, Broadway producer par schlockcellence, Lane embodies a host of show-business traditions. He’s a little bit Lou Costello, a little bit Jackie Gleason, a little bit Sid Caesar, yet Lane is also his own man. Here he delivers a feast of low-comic, high-anxiety invention, a turn so zesty and crafty and galvanizing, with such whip-crack timing, you feel as if you’re seeing Broadway history in the making.

Five years ago Lane tried on Mostel’s sandals for a revival of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” and the fit was OK but not terrific. That show, rooted in burlesque, sent Lane spinning gamely through a candy-colored, somewhat dutiful production. “The Producers” is what the “Forum” revival wasn’t. It’s swaggeringly, exhilaratingly cheap, and Lane keeps the top spinning.

The action is laid in 1959, which provides a more palatable historical context for the aggressive political incorrectness afoot. As in the film, Max’s books are investigated by Leo (Broderick, doing a full-on vocal impression of Jerry Lewis’ Julius Kelp). The timorous Leo mentions that a guy could make more money on a flop than with a hit, if the right amount of money were raised. Max’s head spins; the game’s afoot.

Brooks and co-writer Meehan augment throughout, mostly for the better. Max’s office is full of posters commemorating the old days, days of “When Cousins Marry,” “The Breaking Wind” and “100 Dollar Legs.” The near-simultaneous opening and closing of Max’s latest, a musical version of “Hamlet” titled “Funny Boy,” provides the show with a swell opener, “The King of Broadway.” (You keep expecting the bottle dancers from “Fiddler on the Roof” to arrive.)

Most of the film’s supporting characters show up, chief among them the Swedish sexpot straight out of “Boeing Boeing,” Ulla (Cady Huffman); the really really really flaming director, Roger De Bris (Gary Beach); De Bris’ really really really flaming “common-law assistant,” Carmen Ghia (Roger Bart); and the author of “Springtime for Hitler,” the key to Max and Leo’s embezzlement scheme, Franz Liebkind (Brad Oscar).

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Missing in action: Dick Shawn’s groovy-baby LSD, who took on Der Fuhrer in the film. Here, in an inspired bit of tweaking, Hitler is played first by Liebkind (who slays ‘em at the auditions with “Have You Heard the German Band?”). When Liebkind breaks his leg, he’s replaced on opening night by De Bris. The funniest new material in the show within and show, “Springtime for Hitler” has De Bris’ disarmingly chipper Hitler cozying up to the audience, Judy Garland-style, for a “Born in a Trunk”-type confessional. Here Brooks’ new lyrics hit their height, or depth:

I was just a paper hanger,

No one more obscurer.

Got a phone call from the Reichstag,

Told me I was Fuhrer.

Director and choreographer Susan Stroman, already Broadway’s Ms. Big with “Contact” and various other projects, turned out to be the right field marshal for “The Producers.” She can’t do much about the increasingly padded and aimless scenes following “Springtime for Hitler.” And oddly, “Springtime” is a bit disappointing, partly because in this show, the 11 o’clock numbers start around 8:15. There are, however, some lovely new gags in “Springtime,” including the appearance of a close-harmony quartet called the Heil-Los. And in one lyric, Hitler describes himself as “the German Ethel Merman.”

Stroman’s reliance on prop-intensive choreography achieves something like genius with the Act 1 finale, “Along Came Bialy,” featuring a chorus of Max’s little old lady backers, executing a tap routine with their walkers. As Gene Kelly said in “Singin’ in the Rain”: “Dignity. Always dignity.”

Brooks’ simple melodies--”rude” is his word for them, and reportedly, Brooks composes by humming while someone else transcribes--take you back to the milieu of ‘50s variety shows, such as Broadway’s “New Faces of 1952” or TV’s “Your Show of Shows.” (Brooks wrote for both.) When Lane’s Max lapses into doggerel Yiddish amid that terrific intro, “The King of Broadway,” it’s like hearing a Sid Caesar master class in dialects, compressed into seven or eight seconds.

Brooks isn’t above stealing from himself, not to mention anybody else. “The King of Broadway” sounds a great deal like Brooks’ “Hope for the Best, Expect the Worst” from his 1970 film “The Twelve Chairs.” A lot of the “Producers” score glides in one ear and out the other (“I Wanna Be a Producer,” “ ‘Til Him,” even Lane’s climactic lament, “Betrayed”). But arranger Glen Kelly and orchestrator Doug Besterman have done wonders in terms of fleshing out Brooks’ efforts.

Rather than backing away from the dated, groan-inducing bits from the movie, Brooks and Meehan fly headlong into anything, anything that may (or may not) have worked for Brooks over the last 50 years. Brooks has scored with Hun-zapoppin’ show tunes before, notably in “Blazing Saddles” with “I’m Tired.” Here, we get a little diversion featuring singing pigeons with little Nazi armbands giving their pal Liebkind (Oscar) the one-wing salute in “Der Guten Tag Hop Clog”--”sort of a Nazi hoedown,” in Max’s words.

We’re handed some of the most risible gay stereotypes since Al Pacino went “Cruising,” fully embraced and mostly redeemed by Beach’s De Bris and Bart’s Carmen Ghia. Though Ulla (Huffman) is given more to do than in the movie, she’s basically around for the purposes of cleavage, and may well provoke the formation of a Swedish Bombshell Anti-Defamation League. The Swedes can get in line, right behind the AARP, ACT UP and the African American Cops With Irish Brogues support group.

“The Producers” has a million of ‘em. Actually it has 2 million, when 1.5 million would’ve been better. I could do without the self-referential gags (Brooks’ “History of the World” line, “It’s good to be the king”), the Village People bit (in ‘59?), the Woody Allen routine about someone else’s childhood memory. And considering it tried out in Chicago, to huge success, it’s surprising Stroman, Brooks and company didn’t do more to clean up the final half-hour. Post-”Springtime” there’s a looking-for-an-ending quality.

Little matter. For weeks now “The Producers” has had the lucky aura of a preordained hit. No little thanks to Lane’s inexhaustible but never exhausting star turn, and Broderick’s solid back-court support, Der Fuhrer is indeed, as one Brooks lyric so aptly describes, causing a furor.

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* “The Producers,” St. James Theatre, 246 W. 44th St., New York City. $30-$90. (212) 239-6200.