FOUR STARS

While it might, as in Jonathan Miller’s case, be a big loss to the world of medicine, Jack Herlihy’s transfer to a career in theatre would add significantly to the sum of human happiness.

The fourth-year medical student bestrode the stage like a comic colossus in last week’s hugely impressive production of Mel Brooks’s The Producers, under director Illias Thoms.

His portrayal of the wise-cracking wheeler-dealer Max Bialystock in this gleefully un-PC show proved a revelation.

Inspired, perhaps, by his example, other members of the cast excelled as well, including Stephen Hyde as his fellow producer, the initially timid accountant Leo Bloom, whose clever realisation of the money to be made from a Broadway flop sets the plot in motion.

Eleanor Shaw shone as Swedish sex siren Ulla, James Skinner and Alex Wickens pouted and preened to fine effect as director Roger De Bris and his imposs-ibly camp boyfriend Carmen Ghia, and Philip Rigley was Nazi but nice as Franz Liebkind, the Führer-mad creator of Springtime for Hitler.

Large musical forces were marshalled brilliantly under Toby Huelin. Well done all round.