Posted 6:39 AM by Gene

News hacks must rave the latest greatest things of show biz because, as Shaw wrote in his Maxims for Revolutionists, "No age or condition is without its heroes....[T]he least commonplace poet [is] its Shakespear." Hence rappers become Byrons and hack movie directors get plunked next to Ibsen, with dire consequences for our culture. Well, THE GREATEST MUSICAL OF ALL TIME (so BEN BRANTLEY said), The Producers, has opened in LALALand, and despite having Mr. Kerngershwin Hammerstein write a plug for the piece in the LALA Times HIMSELF, if it doesn't get walloped by its theater writer, who rather thoroughly dessicates one of the ravists' lines that the show is "[the] most fearlessly irreverent thing ever seen on stage" (while it does sound like the idiot John Heilpern, who cover-plugged the show for Disney's late Talk magazine -- Harvey Whiner was a co-producer -- in fact, it was a jaysonist for USA Okay). "[T]o borrow an old joke," he concludes, "The Producers' future may already be behind it." Yes, you may borrow an old joke; the show's full of 'em. Imagine, two years old and already a period piece.