The Producers is the most audaciously funny musical comedy in the West End — Mel Brooks' Tony Award-winning masterpiece that cheerfully detonates every rule of good taste and invites audiences to laugh until they can barely breathe. Playing at the Garrick Theatre, one of London's most charming Victorian playhouses located just off Leicester Square, the show follows the magnificently crooked theatrical duo Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom as they attempt to produce the worst show in Broadway history as a money-laundering scheme — only for Springtime for Hitler to become a smash hit. The sheer audacity of the premise is matched by Brooks' gloriously unhinged songwriting and relentlessly inventive comic staging.
Fans of taboo-smashing musical comedy will find a natural companion in The Book of Mormon at the Prince of Wales Theatre — both shows share a gleeful willingness to go further than any reasonable person expects and emerge triumphant. For a more structurally intricate style of comedy, The Play That Goes Wrong at the Duchess Theatre is brilliantly engineered farce; and Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club shows how musical theatre can deploy comedy as a vehicle for something considerably darker and more unsettling.
The Garrick Theatre is a wonderful venue for comedy — intimate enough to feel every laugh ripple through the audience, with excellent sightlines and a historic atmosphere that suits a show celebrating the outrageous side of theatrical ambition. Leicester Square tube station is two minutes away, making it supremely accessible from anywhere in central London. Book your West End tickets for The Producers and experience one of the funniest evenings London theatre has to offer — Mel Brooks has never been in better company.