Stepping into the manic, musical mayhem of The Producers could intimidate even the most seasoned performer. Yet for Andy Nyman, taking on the role at London’s Dominion Theatre has been disarmed by one crucial factor: Mel Brooks’ generosity of spirit. In this backstage conversation with the Evening Standard, Nyman reflects on joining the latest revival of the Broadway and West End juggernaut, the duty of honouring an iconic comedy, and why the kindness of its legendary creator makes all the difference.
Inside the rehearsal room with Andy Nyman as he reinvents The Producers for a new London audience
There’s a hum of mischief in the air as Andy Nyman stalks the taped-out “stage” on the rehearsal room floor, a pencil tucked behind his ear like a conductor’s baton. Around him, actors ricochet between musical numbers and razor-sharp punchlines, stopping every few beats as Nyman calls out, “Funnier, braver, kinder.” He talks about kindness almost as much as he talks about comedy. “Mel gives you permission,” he tells the cast during a break, “because the joke is never about cruelty, it’s about fear, vanity, stupidity. His kindness makes it okay to go that far.” In this stripped-back space of scattered scripts and half-drunk coffee cups, you can see the show’s new shape forming – still outrageous, but tuned to the tempo of a 2020s London audience that wants its satire sharp and its heart visible.
Nyman’s process is part forensic, part stand-up workshop. He re-blocks iconic moments while asking his company to mine their own cultural references – TikTok timing sits alongside vaudeville muscle memory. On a whiteboard, three words are underlined twice: pace, precision, truth. To keep everyone aligned, he breaks the work down for his team:
- Interrogate every gag – if it doesn’t reveal character, it goes.
- Update the rhythm, not the soul – the jokes land faster, the intention stays Mel’s.
- Lean into London – local energy and sensibility inform reaction, not the script.
- Protect the warmth – the audience must feel held, even when the show misbehaves.
| Focus Area | Rehearsal Goal |
|---|---|
| Comedy | Sharper beats, cleaner punchlines |
| Character | Human before hilarious |
| Music | Bigger sound, tighter choreography |
| Audience connection | Laughs with, never at |
How Mel Brooks mentorship and kindness shaped Nyman performance and approach to comedy
Nyman talks about discovering that the secret spine of Brooks’s outrageousness is, paradoxically, a quiet, old‑school generosity. In early rehearsals, every wild gag was anchored by a note of human decency: Mel would lean in, check everyone’s name, offer a whispered adjustment and a conspiratorial grin as if handing over a family recipe.That atmosphere of safety allowed Nyman to push harder, fail louder and then refine the beats until they snapped into place.He describes learning that the job isn’t just landing the punchline, but holding the room – from stagehands to swings – in a shared sense of mischief. On a show where tastelessness is the selling point, it’s the underlying care that keeps the jokes buoyant rather than brutal.
That lesson has filtered into the way Nyman now builds characters and runs a company. Instead of chasing laughs at any cost,he adopts Brooks’s quiet rules of engagement:
- Attack the idea,never the person – jokes are barbed,but the target is always the absurdity,not the vulnerable.
- Create a “soft landing” backstage – private encouragement after risky scenes, especially when they wobble.
- Protect the ensemble’s dignity – no ad‑libbed undercutting of fellow actors just to steal a moment.
| Brooks Principle | Nyman Takeaway |
|---|---|
| Kindness first | Risk becomes playable |
| Laugh at power | Keep cruelty offstage |
| Trust the troupe | Share, don’t hoard, laughs |
Balancing outrageous humour with sensitivity tackling stereotypes and offence in modern musical theatre
For Nyman, the real high-wire act of The Producers is not just hitting the punchlines, but understanding why they land without wounding. The show lampoons fascists, Broadway hacks and every flavor of showbiz stereotype, and yet the jokes feel oddly liberating rather than cruel. He credits this to Mel Brooks’ almost disarming decency: the sense that the laughter is aimed upwards at power, pomposity and prejudice itself, not at the communities caricatured on stage. In rehearsal rooms, that ethos translates into constant calibration – checking whether a gag is punching in the right direction, and whether the actors delivering it feel empowered, not exposed. As Nyman puts it,the safety net is kindness: if the engine of the comedy is empathy,the audience instinctively senses permission to laugh.
That doesn’t mean the company is complacent. Nyman describes backstage conversations as a rolling editorial meeting where cast and creatives will regularly interrogate a line,a gesture,even a costume choice:
- Context first: Is the target the oppressor,never the oppressed?
- Intent made visible: Does staging make it clear we’re mocking hatred,not endorsing it?
- Cast agency: Do performers feel comfortable with how their characters are framed?
- Audience temperature: Are certain jokes ageing differently in 2025 than in 2001?
| Comic Device | Risk | Safeguard |
|---|---|---|
| Exaggerated stereotype | Reinforcing clichés | Flip the power dynamic |
| Shock punchline | Alienating audience | Layer with moral payoff |
| Parody of hate | Misread as endorsement | Underline villainy in staging |
Practical lessons for performers and directors from Nyman process collaboration and backstage rituals
What Nyman describes in the wings of The Producers is less superstition and more shared operating system: a way of aligning a company’s focus before the curtain lifts. His nightly check-ins with fellow cast members, the tiny in-jokes traded in the half-dark, and the unspoken agreement that everyone steps onstage “clean” after whatever chaos happened in their day, all create a repeatable ritual that steadies performance nerves and sharpens timing. For actors and directors, the lesson is to take these moments seriously – not as soft extras, but as part of the craft. Creating a consistent pre-show rhythm allows performers to access spontaneity safely, knowing that the emotional temperature has already been set backstage.
- Codify small pre-show habits into an ensemble ritual
- Protect five minutes of quiet before beginners are called
- Design a calm, uncluttered traffic flow in the backstage space
- Invite a culture of speedy, kind notes instead of last-minute rewrites
- Model generosity from the top – what Nyman identifies in Brooks
| Backstage Habit | Practical Payoff |
|---|---|
| Shared joke before places | Synchronises rhythm & comic timing |
| Director’s calm walk-through | Reduces panic, clarifies priorities |
| Kindness-first note sessions | Encourages risk without fear of blame |
| Fixed warm-up sequence | Makes nerves predictable, manageable |
Nyman’s collaboration with a legend like Mel Brooks also reframes “process” as something built on trust rather than terror. When a star creator leads with humour and basic human decency, it gives everyone else permission to fail faster, refine sharper and enjoy the grind of repetition.Directors can steal this dynamic: keep the room playful while being ruthless about detail, insist on precision without weaponising it. For performers, that means arriving prepared enough to improvise, using notes as a dialog rather than a verdict, and recognising that the real work often happens in cramped corridors and overheated dressing rooms, long before an audience laughs.
Key Takeaways
As the curtain falls on Nyman’s latest outing in The Producers, what lingers isn’t just the gleeful chaos of Mel Brooks’ comedy, but the quiet certainty behind it. In an industry where reinventions of classics are a weekly occurrence, Nyman’s reflections underline why this one still resonates: its audacity is anchored by compassion.
Backstage, amid the quick changes and punchlines, he finds both a legacy and a lesson – that kindness at the heart of the madness is what makes the whole enterprise not only bearable, but worthwhile. And in a West End season crowded with contenders, that may be The Producers’ most enduring punchline of all.
