Westchester’s community-theater audiences have seen Ray Arrucci in Zero Mostel roles for years. He has played Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof,” and Pseudolus in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” all over, it seems.

Now Arrucci is taking on another Zero hero: the conniving but lovable Max Bialystock in “The Producers,” a role Mostel created in the 1968 Mel Brooks movie. But seeing Arrucci in the role will require a drive up Route 17 to Auburn in the Finger Lakes, where Arrucci plays Bialystock in the Merry-Go-Round Playhouse production of the Mel Brooks musical through Aug. 15.

This “Producers” came together in 10 days of rehearsal, Arrucci says, “choreography and everything. The ‘Springtime for Hitler’ number is not to be believed.”

Geno Carr plays Leo to Arrucci’s Max. “We’re sharing a house up here, so we’ve been able to bond a bit off-stage, too,” Arrucci says.

The cast of “about 30” is large for regional theater and can boast something not many productions of “The Producers” can: “We actually have an old lady – an elderly lady – playing the character Touch Me Feel Me in the beginning,” he says. “It’s not a young girl playing an old lady. It’s pretty hysterical.”

“He’s Lou Costello, Jackie Gleason and Zero Mostel all rolled into one,” Ed Sayles, Merry-Go-Round’s producing director, says of Arrucci.

“When I decided to direct this, I decided to forget about the stars they had on Broadway and just focus on that great humor that we all grew up with. That’s why when Ray came in, I said: ‘That’s my guy.’ He remembers all the bits that came out of the Borscht Belt, and they work here.

“I knew if could get two guys who knew how to handle the jokes and get into that rhythm, we’d be sensational. And it worked out great.”
Arrucci, who’s on stage for nearly the entire show, won’t have time to rest off-stage.

Tomorrow, while still playing Max, he starts rehearsals for the next Merry-Go-Round production, “Little Shop of Horrors,” playing Mushnik, the flower-shop owner and father figure to Seymour, through Sept. 8.

“Then it’s on to whatever’s next,” he says, adding: “I have a couple of ideas.”

The Merry-Go-Round Playhouse is at 800-457-8897 or www.merry-go-round.com.

PHOTO by Glen Gaston: The Merry-Go-Round Playhouse production of “The Producers,” in upstate Auburn through Aug. 15, stars Ossining’s Ray Arrucci, left, as Max Bialystock, and Geno Carr as Leo Bloom.