April 15, 2001

Two Of a Kind

Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, following in Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder's footsteps, share their own zany kind of 'Producers' chemistry

By Blake Green, Newsday

WHEN HIS RISOTTO and scallops arrive at the table with the mollusks still firmly attached to their hard hats, Nathan Lane feigns squeamish, just one of the neuroses he does hysterically well.

"This is terribly distressing," the actor's raspy voice bemoans to no one in particular, but audibly enough that across the table Matthew Broderick, who happens to be in the middle of chomping into a burger, begins snickering. Later, when Lane-facetiously, of course-describes his usual day as "jazz class, two modern dance lessons, Pilates and spinning; that's when you're on bicycles," Broderick sputters with glee.

Having previously worked together "only in the jungle"-as Lane describes his voiceover for Timon the meerkat and Broderick's for Simba in Disney's 1994 animated hit "The Lion King"-the stars of "The Producers" appear to be enjoying each other almost as much as preview audiences have been relishing the stage adaptation of Mel Brooks' much-loved film. The musical comedy opens Thursday at Broadway's St. James Theater.

"It could be horrible if we got on each other's nerves," says Lane, grimacing at the thought. But they don't. Whenever the more acerbic Lane, who's 45, takes a crack at a couple of show-biz types, Broderick, who's 39, quickly leans toward the tape recorder and primly inserts, "Let the record show, Mr. Broderick said nothing negative about--."

This convulses Lane. "It's like they put the two baddest boys in the class together," he chortles. "There's this public persona of Matthew as gentle, soft-spoken, slightly wry, but really, inside he's insane. He's a brilliant mimic, there's a whole other side that should be explored. Either in a movie, where he could play a lot of characters like Eddie Murphy-or in a clinic." Broderick basks in such discerning admiration.

It's fun to be loved, which is what the actors, veterans of both theater and film, have been experiencing since the show's first preview in Chicago earlier this year. "I was actually stunned at that first curtain call," Broderick says. "They went mad."

Now, the earlier buzz having ratcheted up to a roar, the actors are dining next door to the theater where in about an hour the curtain will rise on another preview performance featuring the misadventures of that unscrupulously irrepressible pair, Max Bialystock, Broadway's most pathetic producer (Lane), and Leo Bloom, his squirrely, baby-blanket-carrying accountant and accomplice in fraud (Broderick). A line of hopeful ticket buyers snaking along West 44th Street is a familiar sight these days. The show has an impressive $13 million in advance ticket sales.

Mixed in with the backstage high jinks and heady reports from the box-office front has been the pressure of anticipation of just how Lane and Broderick would approach the by-now iconic portrayals of the roles famously created by Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder in 1968's wacky cult classic.

"It's the No. 1 question we're asked, and the No. 1 answer is that it's daunting and terrifying, because they did the definitive job," says Lane, for whom following Mostel may be becoming a habit: Five years ago he revived Pseudolus, the slave originally played on Broadway by Mostel in 1962's "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum."

"In the beginning I was haunted by their performances," Lane continues, joking about endlessly practicing "my bad comb-over," which in his case isn't necessary but was a distinguishing, utterly ridiculous feature of the balding Mostel's appearance as Bialystock.

"But at a certain point the characters became more and more ours," he says, explaining that "ultimately what you do is approach it as 'this was written for me.'"

And some of it was: "There's 50 percent new material," he says. (Not to worry: "Don't be stupid, be a smarty/come and join the Nazi party" is still in there.) "We go places in the show the film didn't go, and different things happen to the characters." Brooks has written lyrics and music for more than 20 new songs that supplement the film's unforgettable goose-stepping "Springtime for Hitler" number, and he's co-authored the show's new book with Thomas Meehan.

"People have said that we have our own chemistry together and it's totally different," Lane says of the comparisons of him and Broderick with Mostel and Wilder. "Yet, we're paying homage to them. That's the only way we could have done the roles."

Broderick jokes that he worries nightly before he goes on that "I'm not nerdy enough" in the tradition set by the twitchy, bug-eyed Wilder. His own previous experience at following a memorable performance was reviving Robert Morse's 1961 role in the 1995 version of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." (Both actors won Tonys.) "This time, I'm sweating more," he says. "If that means anything.

"I was too young to have seen him on Broadway," he says of Morse, and he saw the 1967 movie only a few times. "But I've seen 'The Producers' at least 30 times. A lot of these lines I know by heart. I've never done a part before where I could actually hear the line readings of someone else.

"He's always been a huge influence on me," Broderick says of Wilder. "Sometimes I hear myself imitating him [as Bloom], and I've thought, 'Maybe I should try something else.' But sometimes I like to take it as close as possible, because if it works, I don't think there's any harm in giving a nice tip of the hat to them."

"We don't want to do the introspective version of Mel Brooks' 'The Producers,'" says Lane, "but some things so obviously work. Why go in the opposite direction?" He offers Bialystock's licentious glee when Bloom proposes they fleece investors out of a fortune by producing "the worst play ever written." Audiences, Lane is convinced, "just want to hear that shriek, see that frenzy. There are certain things you have to live up to."

Reports of the making of the film have described the "utter insanity" that surrounded the project, which was Brooks' directing and screenwriting debut (he won an Oscar for the writing). There have been rollicking moments in the current experience; Brooks has been, Lane says, "endlessly funny" in rehearsals, and in some respects "it must be like in the '50s, when he was a writer on 'Your Show of Shows' [Sid Caesar's television show], with daily fixes and rewrites." But both actors insist that, overall, things have been extremely well-organized and focused.

For this, they credit Susan Stroman, the musical's director-choreographer: "She was so totally prepared, had done so much work before we showed up," Lane says. "It hasn't varied that much from the beginning." Stroman and Brooks collaborate well, Lane says. "Someone else might have been intimidated or threatened by him, but she's very work-oriented. It's Mel who's the cheerleader while she's whipping the show into shape.

"You know, we're catching him at a very interesting point in his life: He's 74 and has been in Hollywood a long time, had a tremendous career. He's made three of the funniest films ever, and now to take this classic, [about] which everyone has said, 'There's a musical in there,' and pull it off..."

"Since he was a kid, he loved Hollywood musicals," Broderick says about Brooks, "which you can feel in his movies. So he's very happy to be around dancers and singers, to hear the orchestra playing all stuff he's written. It's fun to watch him."

"It's been kind of a phenomenon being in the show," Lane says. "There's this anticipation, which is a combination of things: Matthew and I in the roles, Mel Brooks being around. But in a sense it has nothing to do with us. There's people's love for the film, wanting to see that story again. I've never seen people laugh in a musical like they're doing-even for 'Guys and Dolls,' which was a big thing and people were anxious to see again and loved." Lane played Nathan Detroit in the '92 revival of that musical.

What he's really spending a lot of his time doing during the day, Lane says in a serious moment, "is being quiet, getting rest, gearing up for the evening"-when he'll swoop on stage wearing a fedora, a cape, a brocade vest and the infamous cardboard belt. ("We thought Mel had made that up, but there really were such things!" Broderick says.)

"It's very demanding, more demanding than anything I can think of," Lane says of playing the impresario Bialystock. Then he's back to form: "I had a visit last night from the ghost of Zero Mostel. He called me a grave robber."

In what he's called "my love letter to Broadway," Brooks has said he based the two nefarious producers on guys he knew: Bialystock on an unnamed producer he'd worked for who really did finance his shows with money he'd bilked from little old ladies, and Bloom-loosely-on himself, "the Brooklyn Jew whose dream it was to go into show business."

In 1998's Off-Broadway "Mizlansky/Zilinsky," Lane also played a sleazy producer, that time a guy in Hollywood. However, in real-life dealings in the theater, he says he's never "come across anyone so openly criminal about business dealings as Max. But there's still time yet."

"I haven't dealt all that closely with producers," says Broderick. "The side I've seen has been OK. Of course, you sometimes then read they're not allowed back in the United States."

After a recent Sunday matinee, Lane and Broderick were informed that Wilder had been in the audience and was coming backstage to see them. "I was very tongue-tied," Broderick describes the meeting of the past and present Blooms. "He held my hand. It was very emotional. I'd grown up adoring him."

"I thought, 'Oh, my God,'" says Lane. "I'd always imagined what I'd say when I met him, and yet, when I saw him I was like a 5-year-old boy. It must have been emotional and surreal for him, too. I sort of babbled, I told him he was great and hugged him. And then, he held my hand, too, and was very gracious and said, 'You know, I think it actually works better as a musical.'"