April 18, 2001

Broderick's Set to Bloom In 'Producers'

Mel Brooks musical means springtime for hit show on B'way

By Celia McGee, New York Daily News

Enough with the pigeon poop, already.

Now that's not what Matthew Broderick calls the practically microscopic traces of avian excrement he suddenly notices on his dressing room carpet.

At 39, Broderick still looks the tousled teen - his four-letter words still those of a high-school skateboarder who used to cruise his neighborhood near Washington Square Park.

Downstairs at the St. James Theater during a break from his starring role in "The Producers," opening tomorrow, he squints at the floor.

"That's pretty nasty," he says. "I don't mean to sound like Felix Unger, but this is not good." He blames the dressing room's back entrance, which will henceforth be off-limits to visitors coming off the street.

"Just look at that pigeon s--t. What am I going to catch from that?"

So how can Broderick claim to be nothing like Leo Bloom, the quaking, neurotic accountant he plays opposite Nathan Lane's vulgarian producer Max Bialystock in the musical adaptation of Mel Brooks' movie. This is a character who frantically fondles the tattered remnant of a baby blanket and breaks into a sweat at the mere mention of sex.

And something else: How can that person be the guy married to "Sex and the City's" Sarah Jessica Parker?

"I'm not that crazy," Broderick says. "And I never had a blanket - though I did have a pacifier for too long."

Brooks must have seen at least a little Bloom in Broderick. He showed up at last year's short-lived Elaine May flop "Taller Than a Dwarf," to confirm impressions drawn from comic works like "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," "The Freshman" and multiple Neil Simon efforts.

"It turns out the reason Mel and Anne Bancroft came was to see me," Broderick says. "Anne just told me that last night. They came backstage and Mel asked me, 'Can you sing and dance? I'm doing a musical of "The Producers."' And I said, 'Yeah.'"

Broderick knew Brooks, of course. "Young Frankenstein" was "a life-changer for me. I watched it over and over and over again when I was a kid."

Broderick is the son of actor James Broderick and artist and writer Patricia Broderick. His parents met while working with the Neighborhood Playhouse. One of his sisters is a therapist, the other a minister at Manhattan's Grace Church.

The family lived in Greenwich Village, in the same building as Uta Hagen, with whom Broderick studied acting once he realized his calling.

Before that, at the Walden School on the upper West Side, he played soccer.

"We played the U.N. School all the time," Broderick says. "They would beat us because they had lots of foreigners. And Browning always beat us. They had these huge, big boys, and we were just these stoned little Jewish guys."

Broderick's mother is Jewish. His father was Catholic, the son of a New Hampshire postman.

"I didn't have a Jewish upbringing in the religious sense," Broderick says, "but culturally I knew a lot. Not to be depressing, but the Holocaust teaches you pretty young who you are - you're the ones on the other side of the barbed wire. I remember figuring that out."

Broderick thinks "The Producers" Nazi antics - "Springtime for Hitler," anyone? - retain their shock value. The Broadway musical version "is a little bit racier" in its language, he adds, "but I think a chorus of dancers in SS uniforms forming a kick line is still hilarious and horrifying at the same time. We have to walk through a whole backstage hallway filled with Nazi uniforms. It's horrible and bizarre that you get used to it."

It took Broderick a long time to get used to his role. Almost too long.

"I'm slower than everybody else," he says. "I've always been that way. Most of the plays I do, I almost get fired, and after we open, people will say, 'You gave us a real scare, you know. We didn't think you'd make it.' "

It was Parker, he says, who helped him the most this time around. "She was very, very helpful, right from the beginning. She's seen it a lot. That's the upside of being married to a fellow actor."

The downside, he says, is negligible. "There's conflicting schedules, of course - one of us can be in Omaha while the other's in L.A. And it could be bad if one of us was doing well and one wasn't - jealousies and stuff. We tend to be very supportive of each other. And we're very aware of how none of this means anything."

Once, Broderick thought he might become a doctor. "Or a scientist. I'm not saying I can do long division in my head. Or even on paper, but I think science and medicine are interesting. The people thing, though, I couldn't do. I'd rather work in a lab and count blood cells. I wouldn't want to have to deal with people and tell them they're sick."

But he could easily warn them about pigeon doo-doo. "Yuck! There's some more," he moans. "That is so gross."