‘Here, I’m a star’: Richard Kind on the victory lap that is his West End run

But right now, the expression on Kind’s face as he takes a seat in his dressing room at the Garrick Theatre is one of physical pain. It is the steep rake of the Garrick’s stage that has done it, he says.

“It’s killing me,” he grimaces, as he rejects the sofa in his dressing room in favour of a hard chair. As he lowers himself he wedges a large packet of ice against the small of his back.

“I don’t know how women in heels do it,” he says of the stage’s slope. Perhaps the muscle memory of performing the Mel Brooks’s Broadway producer in New York in 2004 for six months and three times at the Hollywood Bowl has faded.

The pain is no laughing matter, but the face is. From his high battering-ram of a forehead to the mouth that seems appreciably wider than it needs to be, Kind has features that silently communicate big emotions to the back of any auditorium. It is a face that can do plaintive, sorrowful and hilarious on a scale not seen since Tommy Cooper. Kind is also a fast, clever talker who, like many comedians, does not suffer fools gladly.

Still, when I tell him my daughter adored his Max and that she also loved his Vince (both slightly age-inappropriate shows for a 12-year-old) and could she please have his autograph, he could not be sweeter in his own slightly irascible way.

“You got a pen?” he barks. I offer my biro. “That’s not a pen. Go to my desk, and bring me the sharpie,” he says, turning stiffly in the direction of the dressing room’s make-up mirror. He signs a programme “love Richard.”

Richard Kind (Max Bialystock) and the company of 'The Producers' on the West End. (Photo: Manuel Harlan)[Missing Credit]

While playing Max, Kind has noticed that the heroes of two of the West End’s most popular shows are Jews who are “heinous criminals”. One is Max, the other is Fagin in Oliver! This observation comes about because I describe Max as good-hearted, which triggers an unplanned debate about the character’s moral compass. Max’s may not exactly point north, but he doesn’t want to hurt anybody, I say. Yet Kind is having none of it.

“He wants to take money from old women. He is an outright criminal. Max raises more money than is needed and attempts to put on a flop. That's criminal activity,” he says, summing up.

I wonder if an actor known as much as anything for the Jewishness of such roles as Larry David’s cousin in Curb Your Enthusiasm has any difficulty in donning a swastika armband as Max has to in order to land the worst show in history.

“It is very interesting,” he says, “That Hitler is not perceived as evil by a percentage of the population is what’s scary about today. You have a percentage that embrace Nazism, and unfortunately it's because Trump has given people the licence [to express] hatred and prejudice.

“But I don’t think those idiots are buying tickets to our show, because we’re making fun of Hitler. Max looks at the armband and says ‘Such nice colours!’. I added a joke of my own: ‘It’s both casual and formal.’’’

Kind could be forgiven for losing his sense of humour about Nazis after the PBS show Finding Your Roots – a kind of American version of Who Do You Think You Are? – discovered that his family has forebears who were killed in the Holocaust. Before then he had not known of any direct connection to the Shoah, other than his Jewishness.

Incredibly, the show also revealed that Kind’s forebears were actually from the Polish town of Bialystock and that his maternal grandfather was murdered.

“I’m from a long line of rabbis on my father’s side. My relatives on my mother’s side were gangsters. What I want to know is what happened to my smarts and what happened to my toughness. I’m neither smart nor tough,” he says. Neither is true. Kind in many ways seems to be an amalgam of both qualities, to which you could also add modesty.

For his fans, he is often the most memorable presence in whatever scene he finds himself in, no matter who else is in it. But stardom “has just eluded me.” 

“There are 15 people tops in the world who have stardom,” he says, without mentioning that one of them is his close friend George Clooney who, a few weeks ago, came to the Garrick with his human rights lawyer wife Amal to see his old friend play Max.

“Stardom is not something I aspire to at all,” he says. “I did when I was a kid. But you realign. People pay $24 to see Brad Pitt or Leo DiCaprio. They won’t pay to see me. But I act in those movies.”

I point out that in the theatre people are paying a lot more than $24 to see him.

“Oh yeah,” he shrugs. “Because I now have a modicum of fame, I can command a lead role in the theatre. So give me the lead role,” he adds, as if talking to the producer. “Here, I’m a star.”

The Producers continues to play at The Garrick with Andy Nyman back in the role. theproducersmusical.com.