Nathan Lane stepped into Zero Mostel's shoes to save the London production of 'The Producers'. It is not a role to be taken lightly, he tells Peter Crawley
So there you are, in London's historic Theatre Royal, at another gala charity performance, among an audience peppered with the faces of Now magazine perennials flaunting various worthy causes and currently, helplessly, applauding a giant rotating swastika.
Once again, in the fractional hesitation between the gasps and the whoops, you remember that The Producers is a show that should never have succeeded.
In fact, it almost didn't. Mel Brooks's 1968 film starred the legendary Zero Mostel as Max Bialystock, a chubby force of nature and an endearingly inept and bathetically corrupt Broadway producer, who coerces Gene Wilder's unhappy accountant, Leo Bloom, into co-producing a sure-fire Broadway flop as part of a million-dollar swindle. Bialystock synopsises the show rather well himself:
"Step One: we find the worst play ever written. Step Two: we hire the worst director in town. Step Three: I raise two million dollars. Step Four: We hire the worst actors in New York and open on Broadway. And before you can say Step Five, we close on Broadway, take our two million and go to Rio."
When Bialystock repeats those words each night in the Theatre Royal, nearly 40 years and untold box-office millions later, he wrings a laugh - sometimes two or three - from every line. Often he finds laughs where none was intended, in an act of comedic prestidigitation; another rabbit comes out of the hat. The quandary of transposing the garish bad taste of the fictitious flop, Springtime for Hitler, to the priggishness of the stage musical was matched only by the apparent impossibility of finding someone to fill the shoes of Zero Mostel. But Nathan Lane, the original Broadway Bialystock, a man referred to (quite casually) by the New York Post as "the greatest musical comedy actor of our era" and - by a curious quirk of fate - the saviour of this London production, knows all about making a character his own.
The youngest of three boys in a working-class Irish Catholic family, Joseph Lane was born in 1956 in Jersey City. He was just 11 years old when his father, Daniel, drank himself to death. In the meantime Lane's mother, Nora, a manic depressive, spent long periods in care. With a typically tart tongue, Lane has referred to his upbringing as "bad Eugene O'Neill". Upon applying for an Equity card, he discovered that there was already a Joe Lane registered with the union, so he chose Nathan as his stage name instead - after the character Nathan Detroit, from Guys and Dolls.
Fittingly then, in 1992, Lane used the character to cement his reputation on the Great White Way, performing in an ebullient Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls. His high-energy stage presence hasn't always found such favour, however.
"Nathan Lane is a rank amateur who should never be allowed on the stage," Brendan Gill wrote once in the New Yorker. Bob Brustein, in the New Republic, went one better: "Nathan Lane is an irrepressible actor who should be forcibly repressed."
Regardless, while Hollywood consigned him to a series of thankless support roles - his one noticeable success was playing opposite Robin Williams in The Birdcage, Mike Nichols's lively remake of La Cage Aux Folles - or anonymous voiceovers (that's Lane you hear singing Hakuna Matata in Disney's The Lion King and sparring with Stuart Little as the irascible cat), Lane has steadily eked out a career by reclaiming roles on Broadway.
In 1996, when a stage version of The Producers was a just a pitch in Mel Brooks's eye, Lane wrestled the role of Pseudolus out from under the shadow of Zero Mostel in a revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which won Lane his first Tony Award. When The Producers opened in New York in April 2001, instantly becoming the hottest ticket on Broadway and eventually going on to win an unprecedented 12 Tonys (including one more for Lane), he seemed to be Mostel's representative on earth.
"Zero's dead," Mel Brooks told Nathan Lane on the phone, less than a month ago. "We've only got you!"
At the time, Brooks was pleading.
After troubled rehearsals and a bout of self-sabotage, Richard Dreyfuss, the original choice for London's Bialystock, had jumped ship just five days before the first performance.
"They were in a bind," said Lane, who was then beginning a holiday before filming of The Producers musical begins in February. "I was responding as a friend."
When The Producers finally opened this week, it was still unclear whether London recognised how lucky it was. Lane is relatively unknown there. Unlike the instantaneous and global fame delivered by cinema, theatrical fame tends to creep around by word of mouth, time-lagged reviews and rare tours. And, unlike the cinema, the nature of theatre tends to resist an actor's "ownership" of a role.
Witness the poster for any other West End musical. Why not Joseph and The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, where the title role has been passed from Bill Hutton to Philip Schofield to Jason Donovan to Stephen Gately and is now apparently so foolproof it can be filled by someone called "H from Steps"? But Bialystock is different. The Producers was the most profitable show on Broadway until Lane and his original co-star, Matthew Broderick, concluded their original contract. Receipts immediately began to dip. In the end, the pair were inveigled to return earlier this year for $100,000 a week, playing to houses where seats cost up to $450.
"It really is Nathan's role," says Rocco Landesman, one of the show's producers and owner of the St James Theatre on Broadway. "He shaped it, some of the best lines are his and, to a certain extent, everyone else has been struggling to fill his shoes."
Richard Dreyfuss learned the hard way.
"It just looks like fun," he told Lane when they met earlier this year at a benefit.
"You cannot enter into it lightly," Lane said after reportedly securing a £100,000 down payment, a salary of £360,000 and a share of box office takings to join the London cast. "It is an athletic event, and not for the faint of heart. I had done a lot of musical theatre before I did it, and I think it may be one of those roles that only real musical comedy performers can do. You can't just say: 'Hey, this looks like fun.' It is very hard."
But watching "N from Broadway" sink his teeth into a role that he has been playing on and off for almost four years, a role he had to abandon when he developed a polyp on his vocal chords, a role that, by his own account, has made him a loyal patron of various pharmaceutical companies, it really does look like fun.
The show, in its every effort to roll back the curtain of political correctness to uncover the nostalgia of taboo, is the most sinfully endearing and adorably offensive musical ever staged. Beneath its scandalously cartoonish depictions of homosexuals, its unenlightened views of pre-feminist Amazonian bombshells, and its delirious broadsides against the sensibilities of Jews, the Irish, the elderly, and even Broadway itself, Brooks's creation thrums with innocence and goodwill. You could no more be offended by it than by a cute baby mouthing a swear word.
And right in the middle of it - until early January at least - is Nathan Lane, playing his heart out, knockin' 'em dead.
Step One: find one of the best musicals ever written. Step Two: hire the best director in New York. Step Three: raise £5 million. Step Four: hire Richard Dreyfuss and try to open on the West End. Before you can say Step Five, Nathan Lane sweeps in to save the day. It is the part he was born to play, baby.