TheSkylight opens the Mel Brooks/Thomas Meehan hit musical The Producers this week and goes to great lengths to create an outstanding production. Skylight Artistic Director Bill Theisen and comic talent Brian Vaughn star in the title roles.
Theisen plays the reprehensible yet lovable, down-on-his-luck theater producer Max Bialystock. During a conversation with his accountant, Leo Bloom (Vaughn), Bialystock realizes that one of his shows closed so quickly that he actually received more funding than he spent on it. With that in mind, the two men scheme to raise an immense amount of money for a show engineered to be so bad that it closes after opening night, allowing them to make a fortune on it. The show they create is called Springtime for Hitler, a feel-good musical about one of the most hated men of the 20th century.
Bialystock and Bloom want a colossal failure, which means making Springtime For Hitler look ridiculously large and expensive. The Skylight may not have a Broadway-sized budget, but early details sound promising.
Texas-based artist Susan Branch designed the original costuming for this show. Branch has created costumes for dozens of productions, so she brings plenty of design experience. And judging by some of her renderings, she really had fun with the rare opportunity presented by Springtime for Hitler. Some of the more inspired outfits include a woman dressed like a German eagle emblem with swastikas placed in strategic locations and another woman dressed as a beer-hall girl wearing a large, stein-shaped headpiece while carrying two large steins overflowing with glittering streams of beer-colored fabric.
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Scenery includes a massive steel eagle welded by Steve Gillingham. The steel itself is recycled and has appeared in previous Skylight productions in various forms. Brandon Ribordy serves as the scenic designer and will be responsible for making large scenery that can move around quickly.
Perhaps the strangest information I've received involves a tap dance featuring 14 little old ladies with walkers. The prop department had to find a place that would rent 14 walkers for the full run of the show-luckily, they did. Those walkers and the rest of The Skylight's production of The Producers appear at the Broadway Theatre Center from Nov. 28 through Jan. 4, 2009.
