Katherine MacAlister thinks this fascist flop is a rip-roaring success

Are you enjoying yourself? Too much singing?” I heard someone’s wife asking her husband in the interval of The Producers. “It is funny though isn’t it,” she added comfortingly.

Make no mistake that The Producers is a musical. A very funny one but definitely an all-singing all-dancing troupe.

That it is comedy-heavy with top names including Ross Noble and Jason Manford in the cast may be misleading, but either way this is a superb production.

The fact that these two stand-ups can sing and dance so well shouldn’t come as a surprise, because both are superb, Manford as the hapless Leo Bloom, a small-town accountant with big dreams.

Ross Noble thrusts himself on stage as the stocky, brooding German, Franz Liebkind who was threatening, menacing and of course comedically brilliant.

By mentioning these two first I do not mean to detract from the rest of the superb cast because The Producers already boasts a proven track record on both Broadway and The West End.

Written by Mel Brooks, who won an Oscar for the original film back in 1968, it tells the tale of Max Bialystock, a Broadway producer on the road to nowhere who comes up with a cunning plan to make a fortune – the only proviso being that, due to a tax loophole, the show he concocts flops.

Gathering up the worst names in the business, he buys the play Springtime For Hitler from the lederhosened Noble and gets the wonderfully camp Roger De Bris, played by David Bedella to direct it.

Opening replete with sequins and leather shorts, and starring Swedish Ulla (Tiffany Graves) whom Leo has fallen for, it’s a wonderfully un-PC romp through history and of course a raging success.

The Producers is, therefore, a noisy, rude, colourful, galloping, all-consuming musical that leaves you rather out of breath, such is its pace.

On until the end of the week at the New Theatre, it’s a privilege to have a high-calibre West End musical like this here in Oxford so do see it before it moves on, taking its high octane cast with it.

* The Producers runs at the New Theatre Oxford, until Saturday, July 4. Box office on 0844 848 3020 or atgtickets.com