Tuesday, May 26, was a very hot day in London, so hot in fact that the management at The Garrick Theatre in Charing Cross Road placed jugs of iced water in the bar for members of the audience during the interval.
Raj Ghatak, who had just come off stage after having played Carmen Ghia in The Producers, was in greenroom number 8 taking off his makeup.
Other members of the cast were out in a flash as soon as the two and a half hour musical ended but Ghatak was still wiping his face.
He grinned as he admitted to Eastern Eye: “I have to put on a lot of makeup. It takes a while to get it off.”
Getting the role of Carmen Ghia was quite a coup.
The story of The Producers goes back to the 1967 Hollywood film, which was written and directed by Mel Brooks, who was making his directorial debut. It quickly became a cult classic, and earned Brooks an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
The movie starred Zero Mostel as unscrupulous producer Max Bialystock and Gene Wilder as timid accountant Leo Bloom. Their idea was to raise millions of dollars for a musical but make sure it was so bad it would close after the opening night. They would then make off to Rio with the loot because the backers would not expect to be paid after the musical had flopped. Incidentally, the money came from elderly women who were only too willing to be seduced by Bialystock and hand over a cheque in exchange for a final thrill. His plan was to put on an utterly tasteless musical called Springtime for Hitler.
To make sure their scheme worked, they would hire the worst possible director in the business. This would be Roger De Bris, played in the film by Christopher Hewett.
Carmen Ghia is De Bris’s flamboyantly eccentric “common-law assistant” and live-in partner. His primary role is to serve as high-camp comic relief, acting as a devoted—yet highly protective and easily flustered—sidekick to De Bris throughout their involvement in Springtime for Hitler. He serves as the primary gateway for Bialystock and Bloom to connect with De Bris. Since they desperately need the worst director in New York, getting past Carmen’s critical eye and securing De Bris is a major hurdle in their scheme.
However, the whole plan goes badly wrong when the musical turns out to be a huge success. What was meant to be totally tasteless is taken by the audience to be a witty satire on Hitler.
“Where did we go right?” the producers cry in despair.
Musical numbers include I wanna be a Producer, The King of Broadway and Keep it Gay.
Brooks said in one interview: “More than anything the great Holocaust by the Nazis is probably the great outrage of the 20th century. There is nothing to compare with it. And so what can I do about it? If I get on the soapbox and wax eloquently, it’ll be blown away in the wind, but if I do Springtime for Hitler, it’ll never be forgotten. I think you can bring down totalitarian governments faster by using ridicule than you can with invective.”
The 2001 stage adaptation of The Producers for Broadway was adapted by Brooks and Thomas Meehan. They co-wrote the book for the musical, while Brooks also wrote the music and lyrics, based on his original 1967 film. It was another triumph.
Carmen was played by Roger Bart in both the 2001 Broadway musical and the 2005 film adaptation that followed.
In 2004, the show had crossed to London to Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Carmen was played by Richard Dreyfus.
And now in 2026, Ghatak has made the role of Carmen very much his own. He plays the part with gay abandon.
Getting the part, he agreed, was “a big thing”.
“It really is,” he said. “I’ve been lucky enough to play the West End several times. My first time in the West End was West Side Story, and then it was Bombay Dreams, which I’m probably most known for, certainly within our community, and then more recently I was in Life of Pi.”
There is no lip synching in The Producers.
“No, we sing live,” he pointed out. “That’s the whole point of coming to see a show in the West End. My background is straight text and TV and film. I’m not trained in musical theatre, but being a good Bengali boy, I have taken extra classes, I’ve trained and I sang in Bombay Dreams.”
He is remembered for his mellifluous rendering of Love’s Never Easy as the character, Sweetie.
Time has slipped by.
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bombay Dreams opened in 2002, he recalled.
“We played the Apollo Victoria Theatre for two years, which is where Wicked is playing now, and that theatre is a 2,200-seater,” he said. “It’s enormous.”
“Coming in for The Producers, this is a show that I never thought I would be in, because it’s always been played by white actors, really,” he emphasised.
“They knew my work, so they wanted to see me. So I went in, and saw the Tony-winning Patrick Marber, who’s our director. And they filmed my audition. I met the artistic director of the Menier Chocolate Factory. I didn’t know at the time that my tape would be sent to LA. So the reason it was filmed is because Mel Brooks at the time was 98 – he’s now 99 – has the final say so. He has the approval.
“I went in on the Friday afternoon, and then on the Monday morning, my agent got an email saying, ‘Pending Mel Brooks’s approval, we would love to offer Raj the part of Carmen Ghia.’ She was just reading the email out to me, and I was like, ‘What? Pending Mel Brooks’s approval!’ Mel Brooks himself has to approve me for this production. So then, of course, there was huge excitement and fear, because actually, what if he doesn’t approve me? And I had to wait a week, and by Thursday I called my agent’s office and said, ‘He’s 98, if he dies, does this mean I can’t do the job because I didn’t get his approval?’ And then the approval came on the Monday, and it was a huge thing, because he is a giant in the industry, a comedic genius, and the little boy inside me jumped for joy. That the comedy giant Mel Brooks said yes to me was massive, and so I was cast in the role.”
He went on: “We started at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London Bridge. Rehearsals were October 2024. We opened November 24. Press night was December 24. We knew that we were going to transfer here to the Garrick. We finished on 1 March 2025 at the Menier Chocolate Factory. We started rehearsals August 2025. We opened here at the Garrick in September 2025 and we have been here since.”
Raj GhatakAmit Roy
British Asian audiences should certainly go and see Ghatak. It’s not often that a British Asian actor gets such a big role in a West End musical.
Asked about audiences, Ghatak responded: “Tonight you saw a very responsive audience. They’re with it immediately. Sometimes a matinee audience is slightly quieter. They can be an older audience, but what you saw tonight is what it’s like most of the time, which is wonderful.
“It’s wonderful to be in a show that is brilliant, that is silly, that is funny. As an actor, you don’t want to plumb the depth of despair. I played Amir in The Kite Runner, and that was two and a half hours of grief and trauma. When you’re playing a role like that, it can affect you – and it did. Whereas this one, it’s the complete opposite. You turn up to work, you’re working with brilliant people.”
But there was a troubling moment. “When we were in previews, there were the EDL (English Defence League) marches and the Tommy Robinson marches, and they were marching down Charing Cross Road, past the theatre to Trafalgar Square. It was a Saturday, we had had two shows that day. (Because of the right wing politics of the marchers), the audience weren’t sure how to react to some of the material we were showing, because it was art imitating life imitating art imitating life. That can have a knock on effect”.
Traditionally, Carmen is easily recognised in his signature chic black turtleneck and long silver necklace. But Raj wears a red and gold sherwani as Carmen.
“They have changed my costume,” he explained. “In the West End, I am in a sherwani. At the Menier Chocolate Factory, I looked as in the original in a nod the film. They dyed my hair black. They tonged it forward. The dying of the hair and tonging it forward and the heat damaged my hair. Everybody thought I was wearing a wig. One of the reviewers said, ‘Raj Ghatak, as Carmen Ghia, is resplendent in lip gloss.’ But the Carmen aesthetic has changed completely in this production.”
He put on his red and gold sherwani for the benefit of Eastern Eye. He was reflected in the green room mirror.
He doesn’t know where the sherwani was bought. He only gave his measurements but the fit appeared perfect.
When Eastern Eye remarked this was very professional, Ghatak responded: “It’s the West End. This is the pinnacle of British theatre.”
The Producers is running at The Garrick Theatre in Charing Cross Road.
