It’s an act of Jewish healing, to be able to laugh at Hitler,” says Andy Nyman. He would know – he’s spent much of the past 12 months milking the laughter himself. the Leicester-born actor is sitting in an empty rehearsal room for The Producers, an acclaimed revival of Mel Brooks‘s daft, incisive Nazi satire that’s transferring from London’s Menier Chocolate Factory to the airier space of the Garrick in September. For his role as Max Bialystock, conniving Broadway producer and seducer of the elderly, Nyman, at 59, is drawing some of the best reviews of his career – a career that’s spanned a slew of shrewdly inhabited parts in Hollywood films (last year’s Oppenheimer among them) and a long, distinguished run on stage.
“It’s a very specific kind of joy, isn’t it?” he says, leaning forward. “To take something so horrific and turn it into something ridiculous. It’s not about the horror, it’s about the ridiculousness of people who would embrace that horror. And that, sadly, is eternally relevant.”
He pauses,considering. “I think Mel Brooks understood that. He wasn’t minimising the Holocaust, he was excoriating the stupidity and the greed and the vanity that allowed it to happen.”
The Producers tells the story of Bialystock, a washed-up Broadway producer who teams up with a timid accountant, Leo Bloom (played in this revival by Sam Mendes’s son, Leo), to deliberately create a flop musical – a guaranteed money-laundering scheme. The twist, of course, is that the musical, a gloriously offensive send-up of Nazi germany titled “Springtime for Hitler”, is a smash hit.
Nyman admits he was initially hesitant about taking on the role. “I’d seen the film a million times, and Nathan Lane was just… perfect. I thought, ‘How could I possibly do that?’ But then I read the script again, and I realised how brilliantly written it is indeed. And the chance to play a character like Max, who is so utterly reprehensible yet somehow charming, was too good to resist.”
He’s particularly relishing the physicality of the role. “Max is a force of nature. He’s always hustling, always scheming, always trying to get one over on everyone. It’s exhausting, but it’s also incredibly liberating. I get to be completely outrageous.”
Nyman’s own path to the stage was less outrageous, more… circuitous. He initially trained as a magician, performing close-up magic at parties and corporate events. “It taught me a lot about timing and misdirection,” he says with a smile.”Skills that are surprisingly useful in acting.” He transitioned into comedy, performing stand-up and sketch shows before landing his first professional acting role in a production of the Importance of Being Earnest.
As then, he’s built a reputation as a versatile and reliable performer, equally adept at comedy and drama. He’s appeared in everything from Peep Show to Sherlock,and he’s a regular collaborator with director Robert Eggers,having starred in both The Witch and The Northman.
“I feel very lucky,” he says. “I’ve been able to work on some amazing projects with some incredibly talented people. And I’m still learning, still growing. that’s what keeps it exciting.”
He’s also keenly aware of the obligation that comes with playing a character like Max Bialystock, particularly in the current political climate. “It’s meaningful to remember that this is satire,” he says. “It’s not an endorsement of fascism. It’s a warning about the dangers of complacency and the importance of speaking out against hatred.”
And, he adds with a twinkle in his eye, “it’s also a really, really funny show.”
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Nyman says he avoids reading reviews, wary of the Mostel or Lane comparisons slipping through. If he were to read those from The producers‘ run at the menier, he’d find almost all are effusive, and his predecessors are seldom mentioned. the production comes amid a bit of a recent boom for Nyman – his turn as Tevye in the 2019 production of Fiddler on the Roof earned him his first Olivier Award nomination.The hit stage-to-screen musical Wicked (2024) cast him as the pernicious stepfather of Cynthia Erivo’s green-skinned witch Elphaba. “it was exactly the way I like to work,” he recalls.”All[[wicked director]Jon M Chu cares about is the truth… That sounds a bit wanky now, doesn’t it?”
Glance at his IMDb profile, and you might peg Nyman as a little-cog/big-machine sort of actor – Wicked sits in his oeuvre alongside huge-budget productions such as Disney’s Jungle Cruisein which he had a small role, and Star Wars: The Last Jediin which he had a tiny one. But his body of film work also encompasses plum parts in independent productions,most notably Ghost Storiesa self-directed 2017 British indie horror adapted from the 2010 stage show Nyman co-wrote with childhood freind Jeremy Dyson.
Then there’s his long-running collaboration with illusionist Derren Brown, across live shows and TV productions. Varyingly writing, producing or directing many of Brown’s projects, Nyman was involved in the somewhat scandalous 2003 special Russian Roulette Livein which Brown pointed a supposedly loaded gun at his own head and pulled the trigger