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Nazi-Mocking Producers Coming to Berlin

By Kevin Spak, Newser Staff

Posted Apr 9, 2009 12:10 PM CDT

(Newser) – This could be awkward. Mel Brooks’ The Producers has been a smash around the world, but will the Hitler-mocking musical play in Germany? The Admiralspalast theater in Berlin—which the real Führer once frequented—is betting Germans are ready to laugh at the blood-soaked past, the Daily Mail reports. “If there’s anywhere in the world where it should be performed, it’s Berlin,” says the Admiralspalast’s director.

Not everyone is so sure. “It remains risky to put this satire about Hitler on the stage in the former Reich capital,” wrote the Berliner Zeitung newspaper. This is a country where Hitler's Mein Kampf is still banned, and public display of a swastika can land one in jail—and the Admiralspalast intends to flout that second rule for the show.

[Images (2)]

[Videos (1)]

Actors Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick gesture as they take a bow during a curtain call for "The Producers," Dec. 30, 2003, in New York. (Getty Images)

Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick and Will Farrell ham it up in this scene from the second movie version of "The Producers." (Universal Pictures)

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This should go over well in Berlin. (satyran)

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