At The Lancaster Opera House, A Winning Reboot of the Multi-Tony-Winning Mel Brooks Musical

by: Melinda Miller

The rollicking version of “The Producers” now on stage at Lancaster Opera House is like a ride on a roller coaster, it races by so quickly. Also like a roller coaster, I heard more than one person say right after it was over “I want to go again!”

A terrific cast, innovative staging, impressive live band and truckload full of costumes make this a winning, side-splitting production. The first one to blame for this embarrassment of excess is David Bondrow, Lancaster’s executive and artistic director, who also takes the leading role of producer/conman extraordinaire Max Bialystock.

Bondrow’s Max is more Zero Mostel (from the 1968 Mel Brooks movie that inspired the show) than Nathan Lane (from the Broadway show), and it is scary-funny how well the part suits him. Larcenous, lecherous and somehow still lovable — he does it all.

His partner in (attempted) crime is John Kaczorowski as Leo Bloom, the mild-mannered auditor whose fiscal musings lead to the plan to produce a sure-fire Broadway flop. It turns out that hit shows have to pay investors back; failures just close, and the guys keep the “extra” money.

Having seen Kaczorowski most recently at LOH in his Artie Award-nominated role in “They’re Playing Our Song,” we knew he’d have no problem melting into a nervous mess as Leo while still singing his heart out. His tap-dancing with a chorus line of accountants, on the other hand, came as a fun surprise, like when we learned Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is also a rock musician.

And Leo and Max better be good, because they share the stage with the incredible Kelly Copps, whose sexy comic chops are once again on fulsome display as Ulla, their Swedish secretary. Her husband, Steve Copps, also gets to play with an accent as the old-school-Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind, creator of the show’s centerpiece “Springtime for Hitler,” hopefully the worst musical ever written.

Not wanting to take any chances, Max and Leo hire the world’s worst director, the cross-dressing Roger De Bris, played with glamorous flair by Gregory Gjurich, who also nailed the role a few years ago at the Kavinoky’s “Producers.” Matt Rittler adds to the flourishes as his assistant, Carmen Ghia.

You feel almost breathless watching the energetic ensemble as they transition through nearly 20 scenes, becoming old ladies, inmates, office workers, storm troopers, peasants and more.  The multitude of costume changes and scene changes are pulled off nearly seamlessly thanks to video backgrounds and, one expects, some expertly coordinated backstage work. Kudos to director and choreographer Eric Deeb Weaver, music director Fran Landis and the entire production team.

The payoff, as always, comes when the curtain goes up for “Springtime for Hitler.” Get this wrong, and everything else would be for nothing.

They do not get this wrong.

A lifelong journalist, Melinda Miller currently writes about Western New York theater for Buffalo Hive, her Substack MM’s Buffalo Stages and Gusto.