Nigel Benson talks Nazis and pigeons with director Douglas Kamo.
Kamo can't wait to get Dunedin Operatic's latest production, The Producers, on stage.
"I've directed over 70 productions in my career and it's one of the two or three funniest scripts I've ever come across," he said.
"The rehearsals have been absolutely hilarious. It's a very, very funny and very, very clever script."
The Broadway and West End smash hit is Dunedin Operatic's big Mayfair Theatre production for 2009.
The musical mayhem features Zimmer-framed old ladies, tap-dancing stormtroopers and an outrageously camp Adolf Hitler.
It has everything but sacred cows.
"It's a classic Mel Brooks musical," Kamo said.
"It's an absolute romp, with big, big production numbers, from start to finish. It's basically a fantastic satirical look at Mel Brooks taking the mickey out of Hitler.
"Being Jewish, it was his way to stick it to Hitler. But it's all done very tastefully. It's about putting Hitler up there and having some fun with him, but with tongue firmly in cheek."
Only Brooks could have conceived camp SS units goose-stepping as they sing "Springtime for Hitler and Germany! Winter for Poland and France!"
Meanwhile, a callow Hitler Youth chants, "Don't be stupid, be a smarty; come and join the Nazi party," as the chorus chimes, "We're marching to a faster pace. Look out, here comes the master race."
Kamo says the story about a camp Hitler has universal appeal.
"It's been a multi-international stage success. It was a huge success in Broadway and the West End, where it just went nuts. You couldn't get a ticket for a year and a-half," he said.
"I think it appeals because it's heavily focused on the comedy of the situation and the big musical production numbers.
"They're all big, big production numbers; songs like Springtime for Hitler and Along Came Bialy are huge songs. Some of the songs go for seven to 10 minutes."
An unusual challenge for the production's backstage crew was to find six pigeons - to play Otto, Bertha, Heinz, Heidi, Wolfgang and Adolf - which could dance and salute in unison.
You'll have to catch the show to see how they got on.
The rest of the cast of 24 has also had to be adaptable.
"It's an extremely physical comedy. Some of the cast are doing four, five or six roles during the course of the show," Kamo said.
The Producers tells the tale of two larcenous Broadway producers who plot to stage the worst show possible and abscond with the investment money when it crashes and burns.
They search for the worst play they can find, and strike paydirt when they dig up a sure-fire flop called Springtime for Hitler, involving a camp romp with Hitler and Eva Braun at Berchtesgaden, written by ex-Nazi stormtrooper Franz Liebkind.
They visit the playwright's home in Greenwich Village to get the rights to the play, and the fun starts immediately.
However, to their mortification, the show turns out to be a huge hit when the audience misinterprets it as a satire and it becomes the talk of the town.
"The producers go out here to try to make a flop of something and it turns into a huge hit," Kamo said.
"It's a great musical, because you're laughing constantly, but still enjoying the story. The story doesn't get lost in there."
Brooks produced the original film The Producers in 1968 after seeing the horrors of the Nazi regime up close when he served in the United States army in Europe during World War 2.
"I didn't see the camps, but I saw streams of refugees. They were starving. It was horrible," he said in a 2001 interview.
"I was never crazy about Hitler. If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win," Brooks said.
"That's what they do so well: they seduce people. But if you ridicule them, bring them down with laughter, they can't win. You show how crazy they are."
The film won Brooks a 1968 Academy Award and saw Gene Wilder nominated for best actor in a supporting role.
The musical was adapted by Brooks and Thomas Meehan, with lyrics and music by Brooks and Glen Kelly.
The Dunedin Operatic production of The Producers is directed and choreographed by Douglas Kamo, with musical direction by Stuart Walker.
The cast features Peter Hocking, Peter Storer, Darrel Read, Kelvin Cummings and Elita McDonald.
The musical comes with a warning about its adult themes and content.
See it
The Producers opens at the Mayfair Theatre at 7.30pm on Thursday, August 13, and runs till Saturday, August 22.
There will be a 4pm matinee performance on Sunday, August 16.
The programme
Act I
Overture, Opening Night, The King of Broadway, We Can Do It, I Wanna Be a Producer, We Can Do It (Reprise), In Old Bavaria, Der Gueten Tag Hop-Clop, Keep It Gay, When You've Got It Flaunt It and Along Came Bialy.
Act II
That Face, Haben Sie gehört das deutsche Band?, Opening Night (Reprise), You Never Say Good Luck on Opening Night, Springtime for Hitler, Where Did We Go Right?, That Face (Reprise), Betrayed, 'Til Him, Prisoners of Love and Goodbye!
