October 2, 2005

ODD MEN IN

By Barbara Hoffman, New York Post

WHEN Matthew Broderick shows up for a rehearsal, he knows every line - just not to the play he's in.

Those who know "The Odd Couple" star from his "Producers" days will tell you the 43-year-old does a wicked Marlon Brando - his one-time co-star from "The Freshman" - and, with the merest prompting, will launch into a recitation of "The Invisible Man" ("So you don't see me, Inspector Kim?"). But for the first few weeks at least, he's known to forget or skip lines from the script he's supposed to be following.

Nathan Lane is another story.

Lane - the Bialystock to Broderick's Bloom, the Oscar to his Felix - is as meticulously prepared as they come. Not only does he know his part perfectly before the first rehearsal, but he knows everyone else's, too.

Put them together - the gregarious one and the grind, the slacker and the scholar - and you get box-office gold.

Call it chemistry, call it magic - but call a scalper for tickets.

Four years after their blissful teaming in "The Producers" and several (separate) off-Broadway forays later, Broadway's golden boys are together again, in a sold-out revival of Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple."

Previews start Tuesday at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, after which you can expect crowds of "Spamalot"-ian size - or, for that matter, "Producers"-ian proportions, harking back to when the duo were Bialystock and Bloom, and lines snaked down 44th Street and tickets went for $450 a pop.

"They are perfect individually, and pluperfect together," raved The Post's Clive Barnes, who gave the show an unprecedented five stars during the boys' second go-round.

Those who know them say that, like the characters they play, opposites attract. And crack each other up.

"It's like watching a ping-pong match," says their "Producers" director and choreographer, Susan Stroman.

"They toss ideas and jokes back and forth. They both have perfect comic timing, and that's rare - and they both respect each other, which helps a great deal ...

"It's hard to make Nathan laugh," she says, "but Matthew can do it."

"We are like the two worst kids in the class, with a very similar sense of humor," the 49-year-old Lane has said. "All he has to do is mumble, and I laugh."

By all accounts, the feeling is mutual. Onstage, they bicker (it's in the script), but off it, the two are close friends.

"Matthew has said, 'I'm in show business with all these tall beautiful girls, and the only one who loves me is Nathan,'" recalls one theater insider. "And yet they are such different types.

"Nathan's more withdrawn, he's less extroverted and much quieter than Matthew," who's been known to out-party his glamorous wife, Sarah Jessica Parker.

"Basically, I'm dating Matthew Broderick right now, and he won't put out," Lane quipped during their "Producers" days.

"We must never tell Sarah."

Apparently, Sarah doesn't mind. The three often hang out together, both in the city and in the Hamptons, where, not long ago, they were visiting "Hairspray" composer Marc Shaiman.

"They were trying to decide whether they wanted to go back into 'The Producers,' and they said, 'Do we even remember the lines?'" Shaiman tells The Post.

"Before we knew it, we were getting a full-throttle performance. They started from the top and totally went for it."

Though they both did voices for the animated "The Lion King" - "I saw him there once, but mostly he was with Ernie Sabella, the Warthog," Broderick, voice of Simba, told The Post - they knew each other only socially until "The Producers" put them together.

As someone who was there the first day of rehearsal recalls it, the initial meeting was a bit tense.

"There was a certain wariness at first, because they didn't know who was what," that source says. "But very quickly, Matthew started doing his routines, and Nathan was on the floor laughing.

"We all knew how funny Nathan was - but Matthew was a surprise."

It shouldn't surprise anyone that, in this "Odd Couple," Lane plays Oscar Madison, the sloppy sportswriter, while Broderick is Felix Unger, the finicky, hypochondriacal newsman who becomes Oscar's roommate, something Oscar's soon to regret:

"I told you a hundred times, I can't stand little notes on my pillow. 'We're all out of corn flakes. F.U.'

"It took me three hours to figure out that F.U. was Felix Unger."

The play was inspired by Simon's older brother, Danny, who, after his wife threw him out, moved in with a friend who was a lot less laid-back than his finicky, perfectionist self.

As Neil Simon recently told The Post: "I watched them [together] and I said, 'Danny, this is a play!'"

Jack Klugman, who played Oscar briefly on and off-Broadway, and for five years on TV, says Danny tried writing that play himself, but wasn't making much headway - so Neil offered to take it over. He reportedly gave his brother 10 percent.

When "The Odd Couple" opened on Broadway in 1965 - to ecstatic reviews - it starred Walter Matthau and Art Carney, the erstwhile Ed Norton of TV's "The Honeymooners."

Directed by a very pre-"Spamalot" Mike Nichols, the stars were terrific together on stage, but not off. ("Art was a very kind guy, but very repressed," Klugman says. "They didn't get along.")

Simon had personally asked the gruff-voiced Matthau to play Oscar, but the star had other ideas.

"He wanted to play Felix," Klugman says of his longtime poker partner. "He told Neil that Oscar was easy to play.

"And he was more Felix - he'd get up at 3 in the morning and clean the floor! He was very fastidious."

But Simon wouldn't budge.

"Play Felix in some other play," he said. "Not this one."

Matthau conceded, provided Simon let him invest in it, "because I think it will run forever."

It didn't. Despite a note-perfect script and flawless performances, "The Odd Couple" ran just a year and a half. (Then again, Simon's quick to point out, so did "Death of a Salesman.")

Simon later rewrote the play for two women, turning Felix into Florence and Oscar into Olive, replacing the men's poker games with endless rounds of Trivial Pursuit. It failed, miserably.

This time, Simon says, he's taking his cue from Lane, who's long wanted to play Oscar, especially when he found his Felix.

"Nathan said, 'Don't change a word, and don't update it,'" Simon says.

He hasn't. But those who love the long-running Nathan and Matthew show are prepared for, well ... just about anything they decide to dish out.

Wintertime for Hitler

MAYBE you saw the movie, and then the show. Soon you'll be able to see the movie about the show that came from the movie: "The Producers: The Movie Musical," opening Dec. 16.

Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick and Gary Beach are back as, respectively, Bialystock, Bloom and Roger DeBris, their over-the-top director, in a virtual reunion of the original Broadway cast. (Notable replacements: Uma Thurman as their lusciously long-stemmed secretary, Ulla, and Will Ferrell as the deranged Nazi Franz Liebkind.)

Fans of the show can expect pretty much of the same, only lots more of it.

"Leo Bloom dances with six girls on Broadway, and 20 in the movie," says director and choreographer Susan Stroman.

"Max dances with 20 little old ladies with walkers in the show, and 100 of them in the movie."

And no, she says, it's not a matter of computer imaging: She hired 300 New York dancers to make the film.

"We set out to do a 1950s MGM musical, not an arty musical, and that's what it looks like," says Thomas Meehan, who wrote the book of both show and movie musical with Mel Brooks. "We hope there's an audience for that."