Diamond Head Theatre has an unqualified hit with its new production of "The Producers."

The Mel Brooks musical included Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in both the 2001 Broadway version and the 2005 film and both stars strongly imprinted the show with their own personalities. So it's a pleasure to report that the DHT production has found its own sound footing.

Dennis Proulx creates Broadway producer Max Bialystock from his own reservoir of charm and bag of bombastic tricks. Channeling echoes of Oliver Hardy as he brays and bumbles through the part, Proulx is instantly likable as a transparent blowhard intent on profiting from the biggest flop and tax scam of his career. Audiences pull for him to succeed at the same time that they delight in his desperation to stage the worst musical in Broadway history.

Don Nahaku is the perfect foil as timid accountant Leo Bloom who manages to capture his dream and get the girl despite almost paralyzing insecurity. Nahaku plays the mouse to Proulx's tomcat and balances Bialystock's belting with Bloom's softer, lyrical phrasing.

Director and choreographer John Rampage keeps the energy pumping through a big and flashy first act and comes back strong after intermission, building energy all the way to the show-stopping "Springtime for Hitler" number that is the highlight of Act 2. Spectacularly vulgar and tasteless, the over-the-top production routine is filled with showgirls, tap-dancing Nazis, and a human swastika reflected in a huge upstage mirror.

The number also lets Douglas Scheer shine as Roger DeBris in a wonderfully overblown caricature of a flamboyant director thrust at the last minute into the role of a singing and dancing Adolf Hitler. Posing and preening, satirizing the part even as he lifts it to new ridiculous heights, Sheer delivers the crowning gem to a number already packed with stunning images.

But this production seems to have no end of excellent supporting performances.

Renee Noveck plays Swedish bombshell Ulla with delightful naiveté and a look that would make a Barbie Doll melt with envy. Daniel Kunkel turns playwright Franz Liebkind into a quivering wire of Nazi paranoia.

Lisa Konove and Twan Matthews are pure satire as a Little Old Lady and personal assistant Carmen Ghia, and James Price is in good voice as a singing Storm Trooper.

Memorable images abound — a stage full of identical old ladies dancing with their walkers, a coop full of pigeons that flap wings in time to the music, beautiful girls and gay icons. Karen Wolfe's costumes, Willie Sabel's set, and Emmett Yoshioka's musical direction are all first-rate.

After the block-busting "Springtime for Hitler," the rest of the show could play as denouement. So it's a tribute to Rampage and the cast that it does not. Proulx and Nahaku wax poignantly on " 'Til Him," and the entire cast brings it all home with the up-tempo "Prisoners of Love."

This DHT production has a deep reservoir of spirit, imagination, and charm. See it whether or not you've seen "The Producers" in the past.

'THE PRODUCERS'

Diamond Head Theatre

8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays, through June 1, with additional matinees at 3 p.m. Friday and May 31

Tickets: $12-$42, discounts for students, seniors 62 and older, military

733-0274, www.diamondheadtheatre.com

Joseph T. Rozmiarek has been reviewing theater performances in Hawai'i since 1973.