Springtime for the Producers means closing

The producers of The Producers have announced that the show will be closing Sunday April 22, 2007 after 2,502 performances.

The 1968 film, The Producers, was adapted as a critically acclaimed Broadway musical by Mel Brooks in 2001. It originally starred Nathan Lane (who reprised that role during the show's first few months on London's West End) and Matthew Broderick (incidentally, he and Lane provided the voices of adult Simba and Timon in Disney's 1994 film The Lion King) and won 12 Tony Awards, breaking the record held for 37 years by Hello Dolly! which had won 10. The replacement cast starred Richard Kind and Steven Weber in Lane and Broderick's respective roles and had a detrimental effect on the success of the show, prompting the show's producers to briefly re-hire Lane and Broderick for another run. Although the musical has many scenes and jokes taken directly from the film, there are still many differences. Ulla has a much larger role, as does Springtime for Hitler director Roger DeBris. The character Lorenzo St. Dubois (LSD), a hippie who played Hitler in the 1968 movie, does not appear in the new version. Overall the musical is much more upbeat and ends more happily, with even the Nazi character Franz Liebkind being portrayed more sympathetically and getting a happy ending.

The humour of the show is accessible to a wide range of audiences, and draws on ridiculous accents, caricatures of homosexuals and Nazis, and many show business in-jokes. The Producers is closing on April 22 at the St.James Theatre. Young Frankenstein, another Mel Brooks movie turned musical, will open there. (more)

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