Heil Heels (2008)

If you've written a musical you'd like to bring to Broadway sometime this century, cross another theater off your list of available houses: The St. James is going to be filled for several generations with dancing storm troopers, a singing Hitler who's seen too many Judy Garland shows, a chorus line of very horny elderly women tap-tap-tapping out a socko production number with the legs of their walkers, and enough Jewish princess jokes, big-breast jokes, erection jokes, and limp-wrist jokes -- tons of limp-wrist jokes -- to embarrass a classful of 9-year-old boys.

In other words, Mel Brooks just hit town, with an all-singing, all-dancing, all-shtick version of his 1968 movie classic, The Producers. If you're a Brooks fan who's been disappointed with his films recently (and not so recently: He hasn't made a good one in 20 years), you can rejoice in this cascade of bad taste, overripe satire, and inspired nuttiness. If you're not a Brooks fan, stay away. This show is too funny, over-the-top, and skillfully staged to waste on the likes of you.

The Producers is not a great musical. Guys and Dolls and Kiss Me, Kate are great musicals; The Producers is simply the expert elaboration of a very funny idea (two Broadway schlemiels, trying to produce a flop so they can bilk their investors, present a twinkle-toed musical about Hitler). If you're looking for dancing, singing actors to play the roles mugged into existence 33 years ago by Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, you cannot do better than Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick -- especially Broderick, who dances the way Fred Astaire would have danced if he had ever played a dweebish accountant in love with a six-foot Swedish beauty who must have sex every day at 11 a.m. There isn't a finer director-choreographer than Susan Stroman now working on Broadway, and there's probably never been a more imaginative or versatile set designer than Robin Wagner. Impressed by the helicopter in Miss Saigon? Wait until you see what Stroman and Wagner have done with ''Springtime for Hitler,'' the number imported from the film but now expanded, elaborated, and pushed to an eye-popping, jaw-dropping, show-stopping precipice -- namely, the point at which the flying paratroopers, the long-legged tanks, and the giant sausage come together to frame the mincing old queen of a Hitler, a.k.a. ''the German Ethel Merman.''

And don't forget Brooks himself. He was smart enough to leave the stagecraft to the pros, yet courageous enough to write all the songs himself. Brooks can't read music, much less commit it to paper, so he hummed his amiable, if ordinary, tunes into a tape recorder and had someone else transcribe and arrange them. That's not exactly how Cole Porter did it -- but did Porter ever work a fantasy called ''The Rabbi and the Contortionist'' into one of his shows? A-

[BOX]

The Producers ST. JAMES THEATRE

You Might Also Like

• Review The Producers | Josh Wolk
• 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