CALGARY - Mel Brooks' The Producers is a mega-hit Broadway musical about the art of creating Broadway flops.

It's a big, brassy, loud, crass, gay, laughfest.

Max Bialystock (Jason Simon) was once the king of Broadway. And as James Cameron, the director of Titanic, assured us, "It's good to be the King."

For years, Bialystock had the Midas touch. Every show he produced was a hit. And then his Titanic hit the iceberg.

He couldn't direct a hit to save his life.

Enter Leo Bloom (Austin Owen), the mousy, mild-mannered accountant who taught Max creating a flop could be way more lucrative than creating a hit.

Together, Max and Leo look for the worst script to be directed by the worst director and starring the worst actors.

What they come up with is Springtime For Hitler, a gay romp about the final days of Nazi Germany.

Based on his own 1968 movie, Brooks has created a wild, uninhibited tribute to everything noisy and naughty about Broadway.

The slapstick is outrageous, the chorus girls are curvaceous and the drag queens voluptuous.

It's nonsense that simply doesn't stop delivering.

The touring production of The Producers, playing at the Jubilee Auditorium until April 1, is bright and sassy, with dance numbers that recall the good old days of the Ziegfeld Follies. And over-the-top acting that would make the scenery chewing Carol Burnett gang look positively subtle.

The production is blessed with triple-threat performers who can sing, dance and milk every line as though it were written by Shakespeare.

On Broadway, the roles of Max and Leo were played by Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, four massive shoes to fill, but Simon and Owen are more than up to the challenge.

As the ultra-leggy Ula, Elizabeth Pawlowski embodies the classic Broadway showgirl. She's dumb, gorgeous and a stunner who can sell a song and steal a scene.

The show is heavy on clowns, with Colin Traahan playing the neo-Nazi playwright as a rather deranged, Bavarian. And Brad Nacht puts the zip into drag as the gigantic drag queen Roger de Bris.

But the award for most outrageous performance in a show where everything is over-the-top goes to John West, as de Bris' gangly, effete assistant, Carmen Ghia.

You have to go a very long way to top a show that boasts a chorus line of sex-starved grannies with their walkers. But that's pure Mel Brooks.

4 SUNS out of 5
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