After writing a play about German girls tasked with tasting food prepared for Hitler, Michelle Kholos Brooks worried about using der Fuhrer’s name in its title. She asked her father in-law, who just happens to be Mel Brooks, who famously featured Hitler in the title of a musical within the iconic musical The Producers: “Springtime for Hitler,” you may recall—in the attempt to be as offensive as possible. His answer: “You must.” He insisted.

The playwright told this story following a production of her play at Guild Hall this weekend, in a conversation with The Producers’ director/choreographer Susan Stroman. Scheduled for a run at 59 East 59, Hitler’s Tasters, based on a little-known pocket of World War II history, was put on hold, as were so many projects when COVID hit. Of the 15 girls made to risk their lives for the good of Germany, only one, Margot Woelk, survived. The others, murdered as the Allies advanced—well, they were just on the wrong side of history. Woelk was raped, but lived on till her mid-90’s. From this slim account, Michelle Kholos Brooks embroidered the story of five such girls, dancing, dreaming, fantasizing about boys, rejoicing as they lived another meal.

A treat at summer’s end, the play, directed by Sarah Norris, is as provocative as its title, and, unlike recent fine productions at Guild Hall presented in all-star readings such as Bob Balaban directed 2020 and Joy Behar’s Crisis in Queens, Hitler’s Tasters is staged on a spare but complete set with young, mega-talented actresses Halle Griffin, MaryKathryn Kopp, Kaitlin Paige Longoria, and Hannah Mae Sturges, who have journeyed to many sites, performing, for example, to a sell-out crowd at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Watching at Guild Hall, you totally get its appeal. The use of contemporary props and language aptly suggests: devotion to a demagogue is not restricted to the dust pin of a bygone era. The chant, “Jews will not replace us!” actually comes from Nazi rallies, appropriated, as we know, in recent times. Cellphone selfies link the girls’ silliness to us: girls just want to have fun.