Brooks goose-steps into Broadway's record books

The irrepressible 74-year-old Mel Brooks, master of black humour and bad taste, is goose-stepping his way into Broadway's record books.

On Monday night his New York stage revival of The Producers, playing to packed houses since it opened three weeks ago to rave reviews, was nominated for a record 15 Tony awards, three of them for Brooks himself.

The two stars of the Irish comedy Stones in His Pockets, Sean Campion and Conleth Hill, were both nominated for best actor in a play.

The Producers, a reworked version of Brooks's 1968 film, was nominated in every category for which it was eligible, pushing into a distant second place another stage adaptation of a popular film, The Full Monty, with 10 nominations.

The Producers, a hilarious parody of Broadway's shallowness, is the story of two small-time crooks, Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel in the original, who set out to swindle investors in a show. The only way they will never discover that the sum of their respective shares amounts to many times more than 100 per cent is if the show crashes.

The search is on for a piece of utter tastelessness, completely devoid of redeeming features, and the result is the jaunty Springtime for Hitler featuring high-kicking storm troopers.

Brooks's new production has broken box-office records galore, selling 33,598 tickets on the day after it opened, taking in over $3 million. It will recoup its $11 million costs, about 12 times the cost of the film, in 36 weeks. Within days of opening its producers were already talking of a 15-year run, and tickets, priced at a Broadway record of $100 apiece, are now sold out to at least December.

It seems investors will get their money back this time.

As well as Brooks, the show's two stars, Nathan Lane in the Mostel role of Max Bialystok, seducer of old ladies and their pocket books, and Matthew Broderick as his naive accomplice, Leo Bloom, have both also been nominated in the best actor category.

According to John Lahr, the New Yorker's ecstatic reviewer, one customer even tried to plead for a ticket on the basis that it was for a friend who was dying of cancer. "That's not good enough," producer Rocco Landesman is supposed to have replied.

Most definitely in character.