Cao Zhen

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HIT Broadway musicals are surely engrossing for their lavish costumes, catchy numbers and dazzling dances but “The Producers” has more to offer: Hitler and homosexuality.

Over the past weekend, Mel Brooks’ comedy musical “The Producers” debuted at Nanshan Cultural and Sports Center in Shenzhen for six shows. Local audience members were amused not only by the zany performance but also by its smart mockery on Adolf Hitler, ridiculous English with Swedish and German accents and bold caricatures of homosexuals.

Set in New York in 1959, the story centers on Max Bialystock, a struggling Broadway producer, and Leo Bloom, an accountant who daydreams of becoming a Broadway producer. The two men then join hands to scheme to make mega-bucks by producing the worst play ever seen on Broadway. When they receive a musical script from an ex-Nazi storm trooper, who tells the story of Hitler’s rise to power in song and dance, they are convinced that they have found a show that is guaranteed to offend everybody. Next, they persuade the worst director in New York to join the play. Complications arise when the show unexpectedly turns out to be successful.

“The musical brings the 1950s feel of Broadway which shows flamboyant dances and stage settings. ‘The Producers’ has been a smash hit since 2001 because its creator Mel Brooks is brilliant at farces and comic parodies,” said Richard Morse, who plays Bialystock at the Shenzhen shows.

“In addition to the songs and dances, ‘The Producers’ is clever in that it poses fun on Hitler and homosexuality, which is brave and unusual,” said Richard Meek, who plays Bloom.

The musical has many surprises, comically and technically, and the glitzy dances are part of the countless jokes, which proves to be an all-time Broadway classic winning a record-breaking 12 Tony Awards.