‘Producers’: One for the Ages?

It’s a Tony Award-winning Mel Brooks lyric: “The toast of society’s burning tonight!”

On Sunday night, no one in Broadway society glowed more brightly than Brooks, the main man behind the phenomenon, the colossus, the Mothra known as “The Producers.”

We’ve officially hit it. Hype-othetically speaking, we’ve hit the point where people on other planets have heard plenty about this show.

Sunday’s profoundly suspenseless Tony Awards telecast--classy and informative in its first hour on PBS, the usual take-what-we-can-get affair on the subsequent two-hour CBS portion--cemented “The Producers” for the record books.

Twelve Tonys, 12. As Brooks said of Nathan Lane (who won one) and co-star Matthew Broderick (who didn’t): “Tops in taps.”

But is “The Producers” a hit like “Cats” or “The Phantom of the Opera”? Two or five years hence, will people be killing each other for tickets, no matter who’s playing the leads?

Its phalanx of producers (“an avalanche of Jews,” Brooks cracked, from the Radio City Music Hall stage) would like very much if it were that sort of hit.

Star-dependent? Perhaps, perhaps not. Star-driven? Yes, and that’s why it’s nothing like “Cats.”

It’s a tri-personality show. Brooks is the primary personality behind it. Another is whoever’s playing Max Bialystock. And the other other personality is whoever’s playing Leo Bloom, accountant, the mouse who--as badly as Brooks wanted to be the king of Broadway--wants to drive “those chorus girls insane.”

Times change, and then they don’t. Long ago, before Brooks made his “Blazing Saddles” theme song a torch to light the way, a show titled “Hello, Dolly!” won 10 Tonys in 1964. It was a good-time chunk of escapism, based on familiar source material, a star vehicle carpentered solidly enough to outlast its original star, Carol Channing.

“The Producers” has a few things in common with “Hello, Dolly!” It too is a musical based on familiar source material, a star vehicle--for two, which technically makes it a stars vehicle--carpentered solidly enough to outlast Lane and Broderick. Not to mention Gary Beach, the best featured actor in a musical Tony-winner for Roger de Bris. And Cady Huffman, best featured musical actress, portraying Ulla Inga Hansen Bensen Yonsen Tallen-Hallen Svaden-Svanson.

The surest thing Sunday night, amid a night of sure things, was “The Producers” taking home the Tony for best musical. A small asterisk of doubt hung above and slightly to the right of one major category: best original score. Would the Tony voters actually toss that Tony to David Yazbek for his score--a sharp, promising one--of “The Full Monty”?

Nope. Mel. Mel, Mel, Mel.

Behind Brooks’ Tonys to some degree is a man named Glen Kelly, listed in the show’s credits as musical arranger and supervisor. In the original cast album liner notes, Brooks goes out of his way to thank Kelly, who “took my rude, simple 32-bar songs and made them sound like glorious and memorable Broadway show tunes.”

From the stage Sunday night, Tony winner Lane also made mention of “the invaluable Glen Kelly.” Subtle, but you could hear the italics from across the Hudson.

Kelly and Tony-winning orchestrator Doug Besterman did their jobs, and then some. In Brooks’ words, they made the songs sound like glorious and memorable Broadway show tunes. They’re not. But they sound that way.

What they are is fun--brash, obvious, eager to please and to be hummed. They have the knack of sounding not just like every pastiche ditty Brooks ever wrote for his movies, but like every show tune previously written by anyone else. In a good way. Their blatancy is part of their appeal. Blatancy always was part of Mel’s.

There’s a reason why certain Brooks lyrics make you laugh helplessly--stupid, stupid ones. There’s a nifty throwaway novelty number in “The Producers” sung by Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind (Brad Oscar) called “Haben Sie Gehort das Deutsche Band?” First, it’s funny in a weirdly benign yet weirdly dicey way to see a Nazi singing a Jolson-style turn. Second, Brooks’ lyrics include the following:

Polish polkas, they’re stupid und they’re rotten

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that schweigen-reigen-schone- schutzen-schmutzen sauerbraten!

It may not have lyrics like these, or Nazis, but Jerry Herman’s score for “Hello, Dolly!” belongs very much to the same like-me, hum-me universe. Old Broadway. But new, too.

Some of us wouldn’t call “Hello, Dolly!” a true classic. So it’s no longer the record holder. Big deal. Some star vehicles give off a bit of a rattle, no matter how “built” they are, and “Hello, Dolly!” is one of them. (As is “Mame.”)

Is “The Producers” a classic? I’d say, nearly, in its own fashion. For an act and a half and a few minutes more, “The Producers” is remarkably well-sustained, well-paced and beguilingly crass, a lovely low-comic achievement.

Director and choreographer Susan Stroman staged it like a champ. More important, however, Brooks and co-librettist Thomas Meehan built the book like a brick, uh, a brick house. Very, very solid.

Solid enough, with luck and in time, to sustain the inevitable semipro, college, community and, yes, even high school productions a couple of decades from now.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

BEST PLAY, “Proof”

BEST REVIVAL OF A PLAY, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A PLAY, Richard Easton, “The Invention of Love”

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN A PLAY, Mary-Louise Parker, “Proof”

BEST MUSICAL, “The Producers”

BEST REVIVAL OF A MUSICAL, “42nd Street”

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A MUSICAL, Nathan Lane, “The Producers”

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL, Christine Ebersole, “42nd Street”

OTHER TONY WINNERS

Best Book of a Musical

Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan, “The Producers”

Best Original Score (Music & Lyrics) Written for the Theatre

Mel Brooks (music & lyrics), “The Producers”

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play

Robert Sean Leonard, “The Invention of Love”

Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play

Viola Davis, “King Hedley II”

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical

Gary Beach, “The Producers”

Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical

Cady Huffman, “The Producers”

Best Scenic Design

Robin Wagner, “The Producers”

Best Costume Design

William Ivey Long, “The Producers”

Best Lighting Design

Peter Kaczorowski, “The Producers”

Best Choreography

Susan Stroman, “The Producers”

Best Direction of a Play

Daniel Sullivan, “Proof”

Best Direction of a Musical

Susan Stroman, “The Producers”

Best Orchestrations

Doug Besterman, “The Producers”

Special Theatrical Event

Blast!

Producers: Cook Group Inc. and Star of Indiana

Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre

Musical director Paul Gemignani

Regional Theatre Tony Award

Victory Gardens Theater of Chicago

This award is given to a regional theater company that has displayed a continuous level of artistic achievement contributing to the growth of theater nationally. A $25,000 grant will be made to the not-for-profit Victory Gardens Theater, which was founded in 1974.

Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theatre

Betty Corwin and the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center; the playwright workshop New Dramatists; and Theatre World, the annual statistics and photography book that has been published since 1945.