“The Producers” opens tonight at Westchester Broadway Theatre in Elmsford for a run that extends into November.

Playing Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom – producers with a scheme to swindle little old ladies with a surefire Broadway flop – are Bob Amaral and Joel Newsome.

“The Producers” is new to Westchester, but Amaral and Newsome aren’t new to “The Producers.” Both are veterans of the second national tour of the Mel Brooks musical. Newsome was in the Broadway company.

One of the first times Amaral read Bialystock’s lines, he was sitting at a conference table across from Brooks and director Susan Stroman.

Amaral sets the scene: “We get to the line where Max tells Franz: ‘Go buy bullets, shoot all the actors.’ And Leo says: ‘You can’t shoot the actors, the actors aren’t animals.’ And Max says: ‘Have you ever eaten with one?’

“I did that line, and sitting across from me is Mel Brooks, and he goes: ‘Perfect! That’s great!’ And I said: ‘Mel, that’s been my favorite line for 35 years. I’m not going to screw it up now.’

“To have Mel Brooks go ‘Yes!’ was something else,” Amaral says.

One of the first times Amaral rehearsed as Max was in Chicago, when he was about to join the tour. Playing Leo at that rehearsal was Newsome, who had joined “The Producers” when it was still on Broadway.

Newsome was a “swing,” ready to go on for any of seven performers. He also covered the roles of Carmen Ghia and Leo Bloom. When the second national tour started, he joined it in the same capacity.

“During the tour, our Leo Bloom injured himself,” Newsome recalls. “So I ended up going on for him for a month at one point. Then he injured himself again for about eight weeks.”

By that time, Amaral had joined the tour and they were playing Max and Leo together onstage.

“We did it a whole bunch together,” Newsome says.

And they’ll do it a whole bunch together again, at the Elmsford dinner theater.

“When I heard Bob was doing this production, I was like: ‘Oh, thank God!’” Newsome says.

“The Producers” is the story of an unscrupulous Broadway producer and a meek accountant who cook up a scheme to con little old ladies out of millions, put on the worst musical ever, and walk away with the money.

It was a 1968 movie, starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, and became a Broadway goliath in 2001, starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick and winning a dozen Tony Awards, including best musical.

Amaral and Newsome have plenty of war stories from the tour.

“When we were on the road, you get reviewed in every city,” Amaral says. “You have to have really thick skin because if you’re going to be insulted every two weeks, you gotta be a little resilient.

“Every single review would compare us to Lane and Broderick, which was inevitable,” he continues. “We even got a review where a guy wrote: ‘Although I never saw Nathan Lane or Matthew Broderick do the show, I can see where Nathan Lane would be funnier than Bob Amaral.’”

Ouch.

“People ask us: ‘What do you bring to the show?’” Amaral says. “Our answer is: ‘We bring the show to the show,’ because when you go to see Nathan Lane or Matthew Broderick or Jason Alexander or Marty Short, you go to see those guys, their personas, and you sort of miss the show because you’re watching this guy or that guy. When we do the show, nobody has any expectations.”

Now, Newsome adds, people come in expecting Mel Brooks’ humor, which is front and center in “The Producers.”

“Mel’s an equal-opportunity offender,” Amaral quips. “I’ve been a fan of the show since 1968 when I saw the movie, before there was ever a glint of a Broadway show. Zero had always been an influence on my life and an idol of mine. And I never saw Nathan do the part on Broadway, so that doesn’t color what I’ve done.”

“Bob and I have made it our own thing,” Newsome says. “Matthew Broderick doesn’t enter my mind when I’m playing Leo.

“I’m a nervous kind of person, and when I first started playing him, I realized that I was taking home his nervous energy with me. I was like: ‘I’m already nervous! I have to find a way to separate myself from him and not take that nervousness home with me.’ But by the end of the show, Leo grows and he triumphs. He’s grown into a man, thanks to Max.”

For his part, Amaral loves his part.

“I love that Max is such a lovable character,” he says, “living hand to mouth and getting by the only way he knows how: schmoozing and lying and cheating and covering his bets. You have to love him.”

Revisiting the characters is like meeting old friends, the actors say, but in a completely different venue: At the dinner theater, the audience is seated on three sides of the stage.

“It feels good to say the words again,” says Newsome. “Because the way Mel wrote the show it has such a wonderful rhythm. Just to say the words is great, but to be saying them on a thrust stage, where the audience is kind of surrounding you, is completely different. We’re having to explore everything and sort of reinvent things. It’s fun.”

They may be con men, Newsome says, but they’re lovable con men.

“The audience is rooting for Leo and Max,” he says.

“We’re the perfect match,” Amaral adds. “Leo has what Max doesn’t have and Max has what Leo doesn’t have. And by the end, we kind of draw that out of each other. There’s only one ballad in the show, and it’s a love song called ‘Till Him’ between the two of us. And that’s the way I feel about the show. It’s a love story between two men, really.”

Having played Leo for such a long time, Newsome finds he has to remind himself to keep it fresh and play it as it comes, even when what comes is a Nazi in lederhosen or a grown man in a dress that makes him look like the Chrysler Building.

“I tell myself before I go on: ‘Just be. Just be who you are, open your ears and your eyes.’ And let everything that’s coming at me influence how I react.”

Amaral puts it more bluntly.

“He’s the seal and I’m the trainer,” he says. “I’m teaching him the ropes. He’s nervous, but he’s also in awe.”

And, Newsome points out, Leo ends up with two things he didn’t start out with.

“He gets to kiss a beautiful girl and he gets a hat.”

A producer’s hat.

“THE PRODUCERS”
Where: Westchester Broadway Theatre, 1 Broadway Plaza, Elmsford.
When: Through Nov. 15. Thursdays through Sundays, with select Wednesday matinee and evening performances. Wednesday and Thursday matinees: lunch at 11:30 a.m.
and show at 1 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday evenings: dinner at 6 and show at 8 p.m. Sunday matinees: lunch at noon and show at 1:30 p.m. Sunday evenings: dinner at 5 and show at 7.
Tickets: $60 to $73, plus tax. (Discounts for groups of 20 or more, children, students and senior citizens at selected performances.)
Call: 914-592-2222.
WBT sets season
Westchester Broadway Theatre has announced its lineup for 2009. The dinner theater follows “The Producers” with “A Wonderful Life,” the musical based on the Frank Capra classic, through Feb. 7, 2009.
Then it’s on to:
“Meshuggah Nuns,” Feb. 12-March 21.
“Titanic,” March 26-June 14.
“I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change!” June 18-Aug. 2.
“Beehive,” Aug. 6-Sept. 19.
“42nd Street,” Sept. 24-Nov. 28.
“Plaid Tidings,” Dec. 2-Jan. 3, 2010.
“42nd Street” resumes Jan. 7, 2010-Feb. 6, 2010