Andy Nyman on starring as Max Bialystock in 'The Producers'

Hilarious bad-taste bonanza The Producers has just goose-stepped its way back into London and stage veteran Andy Nyman is taking on the role of its beleaguered anti-hero, Max Bialystock.

Andy Nyman is a Renaissance man, equally comfortable turning his hand to writing, directing and acting. A member of the Inner Magic Circle, he has been a long-time collaborator with Derren Brown and co-created Ghost Stories with Jeremy Dyson. No stranger to film and TV, he’s also attracted much acclaim for his performances in a range of stage musicals, including Assassins, Fiddler on the Roof, and Hello, Dolly! He’s now appearing at the Menier Chocolate Factory for the fifth time, taking the lead in Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan’s cult classic The Producers in its first major London revival since the original West End production in 2004.

Is it intimidating to take on material as iconic as The Producers?

I’d be lying if I said there weren’t any nerves, but just in the same way that I approached Fiddler on the Roof and Hello, Dolly!, I have to find my own way into the character and not compare myself to the actors who came before me. And whilst at times that can feel a bit daunting, it’s also very freeing not fitting into someone else’s creativity from 20 years ago.

What’s your take on Max Bialystock as a character? How have you approached him?

I think I’m closer to who Zero Mostel was [in the 1967 film] than Nathan Lane [original Broadway and West End productions]. Max is a man who came up through the Lower East Side, through Yiddish theatre, who had a couple of big hits and slowly but surely it just slipped away from him. And he’s not in good shape physically or emotionally – he’s basically a desperate man who’s resorted to almost being a gigolo to pay his rent, let alone raise money for shows! So, I like the poverty of it, the dirty fingernails of it – I think that’s really interesting.

The Producers is a glorious celebration of bad taste, but were there jokes you worried wouldn’t land with a modern audience?

Because the world has changed and moved on, there are definitely a few little jokes that you think: “OK, that needs to go”. But very few – when you think the show is two and a half hours or whatever, there are probably five lines where you think “I don’t think we can do that in this world anymore”. One of the things that interests me – and was an interest in Fiddler and Hello, Dolly! too – is taking these much-loved texts and finding what is the emotional truth of them. Because Mel Brooks’s writing is incredible and beneath all of that outrageous comedy, there’s a very sweet play about three slightly lost souls.

In Hello, Dolly!, you managed to make Horace Vandergelder a lot more sympathetic than Walter Matthau did in the film version – what was your reading of the character?

If you take the songs away from it and just look at the play, what you’re dealing with is a man who has lost his wife. The pain of that, and the way he hides away from that pain, is to deny any emotional life – to make everything about business and money. And that’s the main thrust of what Hello, Dolly! is, because here comes this woman who’s in the same situation, who has looked at her life and is asking her late husband for permission to grab life before the parade passes by – to just live. And she sees the same in Horace and has to break that down. It’s a brilliant piece of writing, and of course we had Imelda [Staunton], who is one of our greatest actresses. But if you take the music away, the power of that speech ["Before the Parade Passes By"] is amazing and it touches everybody – every widow, every widower, everyone in middle age, every person who’s grieving or everyone who’s scared of what they will do when someone dies. So that’s every single person in the audience!

You recently played Governor Thropp in the new film of Wicked – what was that experience like?

Absolutely incredible – truly an amazing experience. I’ve yet to see it, but all reports are that it’s a staggering achievement. Again, a real honour to get to work with Cynthia [Erivo], Ariana [Grande] and the director Jon Chu. The scale of the sets was like nothing I’ve seen in my life – I’ve done many films but this was on a different level.

You played Hermann Van Pels in last year’s TV series A Small Light, which told the Anne Frank story from a different perspective. Given your own Jewish heritage, how did it affect you?

There were two bits that particularly affected me – one was when they have a little Hanukkah service, which was very touching and resonant. But also, the eviction from Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam, because basically we were filming it one street away from where it actually happened, and the street and canal were dressed for the period with Nazi flags and a Nazi truck, so the real world evaporates around it. You come out and it’s very difficult. You just think: “There but for the grace of God” – and look at the world we’re in at the moment. It’s a warning that needs to be heeded.

You’ve worked a lot with Derren Brown – have you now sidelined writing to concentrate more on acting?

Derren’s doing a new stage show from January, I believe, but I’m not involved in it. This will be the first one that I’m not doing – my diary was just so crazy. But also Showman, which was our last stage show, felt like the end of a very happy period – we’d worked together for 24 years.

You successfully terrified theatregoers with Ghost Stories – what frightens you?

Ghost Stories is going back out on tour from January to August – its first full national tour, which is thrilling. What terrifies me? The truth is all the usual things – illness, stuff happening to your family and sometimes the state of the world. But you just have to try and be positive and carry on.

Book The Producers tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Andy Nyman and Marc Antolin in The Producers. (Photo by Manuel Harlan)