Richard Kind knows exactly what kind of comedy The Producers trades in — and he’s under no illusion about how it might be received if it debuted today.

The actor returns to the West End this spring to play Max Bialystock at the Garrick Theatre, revisiting a role he first took on more than 20 years ago after Nathan Lane.

It marks a full-circle moment in a long, legendary stage career, but also a chance to see how one of comedy’s most outrageous shows lands with a modern audience.

‘Funny is funny,’ he says. ‘But some of the funny that we have in the show, if it were not couched in the production it is, would be called wrong, and people wouldn’t like it.’

Created by Mel Brooks, the musical has always thrived on pushing boundaries, from its central scam plot to the deliberately shocking fictional number Springtime for Hitler.

Kind is very aware that tastes have changed, and if it weren’t for the nostalgia surrounding the musical, he doesn’t think it would get produced.

‘Out of context, people might be insulted,’ he says. ‘But in the whole of the show, it’s very funny.

That balance is especially clear in Max himself, a character driven by excess in every direction. His attitude towards Ulla, the show’s Swedish ingénue, is one example that might raise eyebrows now.

‘My relationship with Ulla is one of only a sex object — that’s how it was written,’ Kind says. ‘If you were to write that today, no, no, no! But that’s who Max is. He has appetites for everything, money, success, women, all of it.’

Even so, he doesn’t believe the laughs have disappeared. They simply land in a new way, shaped by the specific audience before them each night.

This London revival also changes the dynamic in ways he hadn’t expected. Earlier productions leaned into spectacle, with huge sets and a sense of scale that matched the show’s outrageous tone. This version is far more intimate.

‘There’s no scenery,’ he says, still amused by the idea. ‘I always thought of it as big and gaudy. Now you look down and there’s a face looking back at you.’

Performing in a 700-seat theatre instead of the vast spaces he’s played before, including the Hollywood Bowl, has altered the rhythm of the performance.

The character remains the same at his core, he says, but this Max is a challege because he’s scaled back, allowing the actor to discover new layers.

Kind is also open about the shadow cast by Nathan Lane, who originated the role on Broadway and remains closely associated with it.

‘I think Nathan is a genius,’ he says. ‘He’s facile and funny and a great actor.’

Their interpretations, he explains, come from different traditions. Lane’s performance had a lightness and speed, while Kind draws on a broader, more old-school comic influence.

‘He glides,’ he says. ‘My take is just different.’

Kind also acknowledges that conversations around comedy have shifted since he was first in this show 20 years ago. He brings up Blazing Saddles as a familiar example of something audiences still watch and laugh at, even if its tone belongs to another era.

‘My kids won’t watch it and laugh,’ he says. ‘They don’t think it’s funny.’

That generational gap doesn’t trouble him. He is more interested in what happens in the room, in real time, when an audience meets the material as a whole.

Away from the stage, Kind has built a career across television and film, from Mad About You and Spin City to Only Murders in the Building, along with voice roles in Inside Out and A Bug’s Life. None of it quite replaces what he finds in theatre.

‘Theatre is my love,’ he says simply, when asked if he prefers theatre or screen acting.

What draws him back each year is the process as much as the performance. Rehearsal, with its arguments, ideas, and shared discoveries, is where he feels most at home for the larger than life actor.

The connection with a live audience comes later, bringing a kind of instant response that screen work can’t replicate.

‘I like instant gratification. That’s what it is.’ he says. ‘I’ll do it film and televsion because it’s my job and it pays a lot of money, but theatre is my love.’

Looking ahead, he sees that connection becoming even more valuable. As technology reshapes how people consume entertainment, he suspects audiences may start seeking out something more human.

‘I think people will want to see humans up close,’ he says. ‘They’ll want to watch something unfold in front of them.’

‘Yeah, I have a prayer. I have a theory that, which coincides with the prayer, that, because of AI, theater will become even more successful.’

That instinct extends to the business side of theatre too. Debates around stunt casting have become more prominent in recent years, but Kind is pragmatic about it.

‘Young people will clamor to see a famous guy, even if the show sucks, but it’ll have a good run. Business is business. They call it show business! It’s business. They should stunt cast! Get people in the seats. Okay? Bottom line, get people in the seats!’

He doesn’t see it as a threat to actors, but as part of how the industry works. Big names bring audiences, and audiences keep productions alive, even if they are reality stars.

He seems almost offended at the implication that a reality star or influencer would give a bad West End performance, saying in his characteristically animated way: ‘You can’t just paint with a broad brush like that!’

He continues: ‘We don’t know that every reality star is going to come unprepared! I bet they would be more prepared because they’re terrified.’

For now, he is focused on stepping back into Max Bialystock’s world, fully aware of its contradictions and excesses.

The humour may sit differently in 2026, but in the right setting, with the right audience, he believes it still works exactly as it should.

See Richard Kind return to the West End stage to star in the major revival of Mel Brooks’ hit musical comedy The Producers at the Garrick Theatre from March 23, for a strictly limited seven-week run.

Got a story?

If you’ve got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the Metro.co.uk entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@metro.co.uk, calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we’d love to hear from you.

MORE: Jack Whitehall: ‘I’m playing a cult classic Tom Hanks role – we did something different’

MORE: The West End’s new Romeo and Juliet is the best adaptation in years

MORE: ‘I starred in The White Lotus – the twist in my Netflix horror is genius’

If a car is wedged in a ditch, you could gather ten people to haul it out with steady, shared effort.

Or you could stand back and watch one Herculean figure strain every sinew, determined to prove they can do it alone. But the car ends up back on the road either way.

In one version, the task disappears and the road trip continues; in the other, the labour itself becomes the spectacle.

That has always been my hesitation with one-person shows. However impressive the feat, the sheer scale of the exertion can eclipse the narrative you came to see.

Instead of surrendering to a story, theatre-goers find themselves watching the trapeze artist and half-bracing for the fall.

That tension hums through the West End’s new adaptation of Dracula at the Noël Coward Theatre, where Cynthia Erivo plays not one role but 23.

Over two relentless hours she shifts between Van Helsing, Mina, Jonathan Harker, Lucy, Renfield, Seward and Dracula himself, barely pausing for breath and never meaningfully leaving the stage.

The production, which opened on February 16, is directed by Kip Williams, a theatre-maker known for his fusion of live performance and video design. Here, that signature style is pushed to its most extreme.

Williams builds the show around a complex dialogue between live action and pre-recorded film, meaning Erivo must not only carve out distinct physical and vocal identities for each character, but also hit cues with forensic precision so that filmed versions of herself can respond in perfect time.

Cameras track her constantly, capturing footage that is projected instantly onto a towering screen, while other sequences have been pre-shot and must align seamlessly with her live delivery.

Certain characters exist only in the filmed realm, never quite sharing the same physical space as the live body before us, a subtle nod to vampiric lore in which some creatures cast no image in mirrors.

Visually, the result is often beautiful, and the solo conceit dovetails neatly with the novel’s epistolary structure: whoever is ‘writing’ a journal entry or letter exists live before us, while the recipients materialise on the vast screen behind, flickering into being like thoughts made visible.

That interplay between presence and projection creates a hierarchy of perspective in which only one viewpoint feels fully corporeal at a time, meaning we are always anchored to a single consciousness, one pen scratching across paper, while the others hover just out of reach.

Additionally, the scale of the projection ensures there are few bad seats in the house, and the interplay between live and filmed action enables flourishes that would be impossible in a conventional staging.

For example, a dreamlike sequence between Dracula and Lucy layers recorded and live movement to disorienting effect, while a brief moment in which Erivo steps to the lip of the stage and sings as Dracula, stripped of technological scaffolding, feels quietly spellbinding precisely because it breaks the pattern.

And of course, Erivo’s excellence is the least surprising element of the evening.

She is magnetic, meticulous, and emotionally lucid throughout, finding flashes of humour and menace even while juggling an almost unmanageable technical load.

At their best, her transformations between characters can be startling, with Jonathan’s nervous energy giving way to Mina’s controlled intelligence with such clarity that it is briefly possible to forget they share a body.

At the same time, the feat has inevitable limits. There are moments that could be deeply resonant in the hands of an actor of Erivo’s ability, that instead seemed rushed or surface-level.

Some male characters, particularly Seward and Harker, blur at the edges, and the first appearance of Van Helsing in long white hair and beard drew involuntary giggles.

There is something faintly cartoonish about some of the disguises, and in those moments, you can sense how precarious the whole enterprise is.

The production lives on a knife’s edge between audacious and absurd, and every so often it wobbles, threatening to tip from bravura into unintended comedy, and this is in part because the technical demands are so formidable.

Each exchange with her on-screen counterparts depends on near-perfect timing, and as a result, over the evening, there were perhaps a dozen noticeable slips: a stumbled word, a rushed beat, a pause hanging slightly too long.

In another context that might feel disruptive, here it seemed remarkable that there were not more, given that Erivo is effectively reciting the better part of a novel while executing intricate blocking and rapid costume shifts.

Still, you could argue that the one-person conceit does more than showcase stamina; it reframes the story in a way that feels thematically pointed.

Dracula is a tale of repression, contagion, and desire pushing against propriety, of identities splitting under pressure.

Watching a single performer embody predator and prey, purity and corruption, shifts the drama inward. Mina and Dracula sharing a face makes their connection feel less like a battle across a room and more like a struggle within one psyche.

The constant doubling — a live body here, a filmed apparition there — reinforces that sense of fragmentation, as though we are witnessing a mind at war with itself.

And with Erivo, openly queer and fluid in her masculinity and femininity, inhabiting every role, the novel’s homoerotic undertones surface with a clarity that feels both modern and radical.

By the final stretch, though, I found myself increasingly aware of the human cost, and when the standing ovation arrived — thunderous and prolonged — the applause carried a note of secondhand exhaustion.

In the foyer afterwards, conversations revolved less around Lucy’s tragedy or Mina’s ordeal than around how Erivo could possibly sustain this for the duration of the run.

In the end, the car does get moved out of the ditch. The narrative lands, the imagery lingers, and the audience leaves impressed – but I would be curious to see this adaptation distributed among a full cast, released from the tension of its own audacity, with some breathing room for a towering talent like Erivo to really act.

Still, if you arrive at the Noel Coward prepared to marvel at the feat as much as to lose yourself in the tale, you may find the sheer audacity of Erivo’s undertaking is worth the cost of admission.

Got a story?

If you’ve got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the Metro.co.uk entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@metro.co.uk, calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we’d love to hear from you.

MORE: American Psycho’s theatre adaptation left me feeling numb – and not in a good way

MORE: Super Mario beats Cynthia Erivo to win second Grammy for The 8-Bit Big Band

MORE: The Traitors announces 2027 stage version with ‘thrilling new hunting ground’