April 2000

Coping, queens-style

By Harry Haun, Playbill

The day's rehearsal has ended, but the imagination remains in over-drive while Matthew Broderick conducts a tour around his about-to-be Broadway abode-a drab little pad for a hard-pressed young couple in Queens. The set is still a skeletal mock-up at this stage, so some verbal filling in is required. "This is our kitchen," he announces, gesturing vaguely at a chest-high flat with telltale utensils, "and this"-to a sawed-off set of steps-"is our stoop." The stoop detaches from the set, as Broderick cheerfully demonstrates with the miniature its designer Tony Walton left behind. All in all, a love nest not without its share of thorns.

At tour's end, the actor and the visiting reporter settle in what seems to be the living room and are joined by the woman of the "house," Parker Posey, who is making her Broadway bow as Broderick's wife in Taller Than a Dwarf this month at the Longacre Theatre.

The thing that attracted her to this project, she say simply, was "just reading it. It's such a good play." Then came the extras: "Getting a chance to work with Matthew Broderick in an Elaine May play, directed by Alan Arkin-what was I going to do? Say no to that?"

Not bloody likely, but it was the sort of question she'd been sweeping under the carpet for seven years and 30 films. Her only brush with theatre was in Four Dogs and a Bone. "But that was L.A., and it wasn't long-just a nine-week run. Now, this," she postscripts with emphasis, "really feels good because I live here. I can walk to rehearsal. I can see people I haven't seen in a while. I've been traveling for a couple of years, making films."

The volume of independent films she has racked up stuns Broderick. "Then, you really are Indie Queen," he asides. "Don't say that," she shoots back in a stage whisper. It's a title she'd sooner pass on-hence, this Broadway fork-in-the-road. Then, she playfully ponders how it would apply to her present situation-"Broadway Indie Queen," "Indie Broadway Queen"-and wonders if a true Indie Queen should be doing Off-Broadway.

But Broadway was the offer, and the boffo business of her latest release-Scream 3-befits a Broadway star, even if she contractually can't say whether she kills or is killed. "I did that with Godzilla," Broderick recalls. "I had to sign a contract not to reveal anything about the monster." A sly smile starts to form, "I can't discuss it, even now."

It's interesting that these two young stars are crossing at this particular juncture, visitors to each other's respective planets. She's arriving on Broadway where he has won two Tonys (for Brighton Beach Memoirs and How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying) just when he has a film win the Special Jury Prize at Sundance where she has been a festival favorite since 1997's The House of Yes earned that same distinction.

You Can Count on Me, written and directed by Kenneth (This Is Our Youth) Lonergan, is the name of Broderick's new film. "Kenny has been my best friend since we were teen-agers-we went to high school together-and this is the first film he's directed. It's about a brother and sister-Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney-and I play her boss at the bank. I've come form out of town to get it in better shape, and I drive everybody crazy. That's kinda it, for me. My part isn't huge. The focus is on the brother and sister relationship."

Broderick has been a Broadway fixture so long that his debut entry, Brighton Beach Memoirs, is about to be revived next season in rep with on of its sequels (Broadway Bound). "I did that in '83. I was 21 by the time we got to New York. On the road I was 20. I remember I couldn't drink until I got to New York. It was a great time. Joyce Van Patten was in it. She played my aunt." (In Taller Than a Dwarf, she plays his mother.)

His original Brighton Beach mom was a nominated Elizabeth Franz, who didn't collect her Tony until last June-as Linda Loman in Death of a Salesman-and Broderick was there to shout "Congratulations, Mom!" at her across a crowded room. "It's fun to see people after they win things," he says. "Now, I have the little woman winning things."

The little woman, of course, is Sarah Jessica Parker, who recently garnered a Golden Globe for her HBO series, "Sex and the City." "She was genuinely thrilled and surprised, but she knows that you still have to make coffee in the morning."

That beat goes on in the unreal world as well, as Taller Than a Dwarf bears witness. "In some ways," says Broderick, "it's about a couple struggling to get by in a world where everyone's becoming a millionaire but them, and they're working harder and harder."

This reality settles heavily on the shoulders of the young accountant played by Broderick. When he oversleeps, he opts not to go to work at all-in fact, he won't leave the house. "I have a moment where I just sorta cut out and say, 'I don't want to be grateful that I'm not miserable. That's like being happy that you're taller than a dwarf. I'm tired of it. I want to have something to be happy about. I don't just want to be grateful that I'm not dying.'"

Taller Than a Dwarf suggests a second cousin, junior grade, to The Prisoner of Second Avenue-and Elaine May's Rx is the same as Neil Simon's: happy talk. The comedy comes with family members descending from all sides to talk him back on the treadmill.

"A good comedy you can tell as a drama, too," notes Broderick. "We want the audience to laugh, or course, but we want them to think too-maybe even to recognize themselves."