Sing along with Saddam Hussein

IF Mel Brooks could write “Springtime for Hitler” for a musical, why can’t Joe Beck write “Saddam: The Musical”?

Beck’s show opens Friday at the 50-seat theater in the Drama Book Shop in Manhattan. It’s expected, more or less, to coincide with the beginning of Hussein’s trial in Iraq.

Beck says he wrote the play because “I wanted to cut him down to size and make him look like an inept boob.”

Beck’s script transforms the dictator into the henpecked husband of an American-born wife named Martha. She isn’t based directly on anyone, Beck says -- although she shares a few traits with Martha Stewart.