Comic support in The Producers is lent by Roger Bart (with his fourteen year old daughter Alexandra) and Cady Huffman (with Kiss Me, Kate and Follies choreographer Kathleen Marshall). Bart plays the effete director Roger de Bris "common law assistant" Carmen Ghia, while the statuesque Huffman is Ulla, the Swedish secretary/receptionist who lands a prime role in The Producers' musical-within-a-musical, Springtime for Hitler.
The Producers, based on Mel Brooks' 1968 Oscar-winning movie, tells of a larger-than-life but the down-on-his-luck Broadway producer Max Bialystock (Nathan Lane) who enlists a meek tax accountant, Leo Bloom (Matthew Broderick), to help him get back on top. The scheme is not to mount a hit play but to raise a lot of money, produce a great stinking flop, and then disappear before paying back the investors. What better choice for a disaster than "Springtime For Hitler," a dramatic love-letter to Der Furher penned by a German lunatic (Brad Oscar) living in a tenement? After securing the property, Max and Leo add a flamboyant director (Gary Beach) to all-but-ensure that "Springtime For Hitler" will be excruciatingly bad. Only it turns out, it's so bad, it's funny - and a hit. Brooks wrote the score with Tony winner Susan Stroman directing and choreographing.
