‘The Producers’ opens in Germany to nervous laughter

A.J. GOLDMANN

Berlin

The German transplant of Mel Brooks’s ridiculously popular 2001 Broadway musical, “The Producers,” based on his 1968 film about two Jewish con men who cook up a scheme to produce the world’s worst musical and defraud the investors, was anxiously awaited in the nation’s capital.

In the weeks leading up to opening night, newspapers here were full of headlines such as “Can Berlin Laugh at Hitler,” in reference to the show-stopping musical number “Springtime for Hitler.”

This certainly isn’t the first time that Germans have had the opportunity to laugh at Hitler—films ranging from Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” (1940) to Swiss director Dani Levy’s 2007 comedy “Mein Führer” are not unknown to German audiences. The original movie version of “The Producers” was banned in Germany for nearly a decade but finally shown in 1976 at a Jewish film festival (with the title “Frühling für Hitler”), where it gained a cult status that it retains to this day.

 

Still, the sight of real Germans goose-stepping in Nazi uniforms and dancing in Swastika formation (that symbol is unconstitutional in Germany, though a dispensation is made for works of art) promised to be a different animal, especially for an audience snacking on blutwürst with sauerkraut at intermission. (In fact, most of the principle cast is Austrian—like the führer himself—as this production comes to Berlin by way of Vienna, where it recently ended a year-long run two months early due to poor ticket sales.)

In an interview with the Associated Press, Mr. Brooks said that he expects most of the Berlin audience—at least those born after the war—to understand the show. “I don’t think there’s a problem at all. . . . They’re hip, they’re bright and Berlin has always been a great theater town.” At the same time, he’s been insistent that “The Producers” is not a musical about Hitler or Nazism, but about the boundaries of taste.

It is a message that seems to have been lost on most people here.

At Sunday’s gala premiere, everyone seemed pumped to ridicule the führer. Politicians, actors and rock stars crowded the courtyard of the Admiralspalast, which was a sea of red and black as Nazi flags with pretzels and sausages in lieu of swastikas fluttered about. Ushers in traditional Bavarian dress handed out flags and armbands and scattered audience members sported World War II helmets and other regalia. Showtime was announced by an air-raid siren, which added to the giddy carnival atmosphere.

But inside, the theater held a palpable charge of nervous energy. Germans have been doing so much apologizing for the past 60 years that they need to justify how they could laugh at Hitler. This has been evident not only from the buzz surrounding the show, but also in a marketing campaign that alternately struck tones of irreverence and sobriety. No surprise then that the playbills carried a quote from Mr. Brooks about the importance of laughing at Hitler. “If you denounce such people with humor, they simply have no chance.” Having been granted permission to laugh, the audience eagerly awaited their moment of catharsis.

Before the curtain rose, the Club of German Film Journalists awarded Mr. Brooks the Ernst Lubitsch Prize for achievement in comedy, named for the Berlin-born filmmaker whose 1942 film “To Be or Not to Be” was among the first Nazi satires. The presenter reminded the audience that Hitler’s bunker was but a short distance away, and grouped Brooks together with Lubitsch and Chaplin as an artist who bravely harnessed humor to combat fascism. Huh? “The Producers” is many wonderful things, but a pointed satire of the Third Reich it is not. Seriously, there’s nothing deep about Nazi showgirls pirouetting or carrier pigeons doing the Hitler salute.

Judging by the reception opening night, I’m sorry to report that Mr. Brooks seems to have overestimated his audience. While his nothing-is-sacred breed of skewering everyone and everything—not only Nazis, but also Jews, homosexuals, the elderly and blondes— seems to have gone over well (Berlin’s openly gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit, was screeching in the box from which Hitler used to watch operettas), the fundamentally Jewish nature of so much of the humor does not resonate for a society that has been starved of Jewish culture for the past 70 years. Add to that the fact that “The Producers” is in large part a send-up of the whole Broadway musical tradition, an unfamiliar one to Germans. Many of the show’s best jokes were greeted with dead silence. It was somewhat like going to see the original Broadway production surrounded by clueless out-of-towners.

So far, the reviews have been mostly positive, although—predictably—very focused on the Nazi content. The Berlin tabloid BZ answered the question of whether Berlin should be allowed to laugh at Hitler with a resounding “yes.” “Not only should we laugh about Hitler. We must laugh about him. Especially in Berlin.” That’s a pretty strong imperative, but something tells me that Germans are historically sensitive enough to use it wisely. And with caution.

The gala audience certainly laughed loud and long during the “Springtime for Hitler” centerpiece. But despite this, the number of empty seats did not augur well for the remainder of the show’s two-month run.

—Mr. Goldmann writes about culture from Berlin and New York.