The Reproducers (2008)

After The Producers' ensemble finishes belting ''Opening Night,'' the show's introductory number, a familiar stocky figure strides onto the stage, an open newspaper blocking his face. As the audience holds its breath with grand-entrance giddiness, the spotlighted thesp yanks down the paper to reveal -- Hey! Who the hell is that guy?

It's a star's entrance, but an audience expecting Tony winner Nathan Lane now gets an Oscar -- Brad Oscar, who, with ex-Wings star Steven Weber, has just replaced Lane and Matthew Broderick in Broadway's box-office-booming phenomenon of 2001. For all the brilliance, joy, and raucous humor the show delivers no matter who's barking crude Bialystockisms -- like ''Who do you have to f -- - to get a break in this town?'' -- Lane so indelibly embodied the character that to see anyone else play it, even to the Max, feels like a bit...less.

Oscar (Tony-nominated in the role of the show's Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind) often subbed for Lane in the last year, and has certainly been influenced by his predecessor. With the same portly build and elastic face, he not only appropriates the actor's near-operatic bellowing of punchlines but resembles him. Henry Goodman, the great British actor first cast to replace Lane, was sacked, his interpretation said to be too subtle for a role that demands stage-rattling chutzpah. Oscar makes no such mistake; he gives Lane's performance, which only underlines what you're missing.

And then there's Leo Bloom: Weber, with his shrewd comic rhythms, acquits himself well. But where Broderick gave the timid accountant an Ubernerd (and sometimes tiresome) nasality, Weber is under-mannered. His Bloom is often just too bold, with only perpetually widened eyes simulating naivete.

To be fair, with a show as gloriously entertaining as this -- Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan's bawdy script is still riotously funny; Susan Stroman's direction and choreography, with beboppin' biddies and high-kicking goose-steppers, still as hilarious as it is inventive -- such quibbling is like sniffing at the Hope diamond because it's not the Kohinoor. Audiences who never saw Lane and Broderick work their magic will miss nothing, and will enjoy the supporting cast more than they would have a year ago. Gary Beach and Roger Bart -- as Roger DeBris, the flamboyant star of ''Springtime for Hitler,'' and his mincing manservant Carmen Ghia -- have grown even more staggeringly and devilishly outrageous. Bart stretches Carmen's sssibilance to outlandish lengths, and Beach camps up his Hitler with an H! posturing to beat the armband.

Compared with its previous superhuman incarnation, this Producers gets an A-. Graded on a human scale, it's still an A.

You Might Also Like

• Stage Review The Producers | Daniel Okrent
• Stage News The hottest thing on Broadway: Hollywood spin-offs | Whitney Pastorek
• In the News How will ''Frasier'' end? | Gary Susman
• In the News Lane and Broderick will film ''Producers'' | Gary Susman
• In the News ''Producers'' sets sales record | Gary Susman
• Halloween ''Young Frankenstein'' crew's favorite frights | Clark Collis