Tonys 2013: Nathan Lane varies his pace

1/19

“Birdman” actress Emma Stone (center), took on Roundabout Theatre Company’s “Cabaret.” Pictured with Gayle Rankin, left, Andrea Goss, Kristin Olness, Stacey Sipowicz, Kaleigh Cronin and Jessica Pariseau. (Joan Marcus / Roundabout Theatre)

2/19

Oscar winner Helen Mirren once again portrays Queen Elizabeth II in Peter Morgan’s play “The Audience,” directed by two-time Tony Award winner Stephen Daldry. (Johan Persson / Associated Press)

3/19

Actress Carly Hughes and Sugarland singer Jennifer Nettles perform during a rehearsal for Broadway’s “Chicago.” (Astrid Stawiarz / Getty Images)

4/19

Sienna Miller, center, and Alan Cumming, right, appear at the curtain call following her debut performance in Broadway’s “Cabaret.” (Greg Allen / Invision / Associated Press)

5/19

“Nightcrawler” actor Jake Gyllenhaal, left, and Ruth Wilson stand onstage at the opening night curtain call of “Constellations” at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. (Greg Allen / Invision / Associated Press)

6/19

Bradley Cooper, left, Alessandro Nivola and Patricia Clarkson perform in “The Elephant Man” at the Booth Theatre in New York. (Joan Marcus / Associated Press)

7/19

“Wolverine” actor Hugh Jackman played The Man in “The River,” a play by Jez Butterworth, directed by Ian Rickson, at Circle in the Square Theatre in New York. (Richard Termine / Associated Press)

8/19

Film actors Ewan McGregor and Maggie Gyllenhaal made their Broadway debuts Oct. 30 in Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Thing” in New York. ( Joan Marcus / Associated Press)

9/19

James Franco, left, with Jim Norton, made his Broadway debut in “Of Mice and Men” in March.

REVIEW: ‘Of Mice and Men’ finds James Franco in CliffsNotes mode (Richard Phibbs / Associated Press)

10/19

Four-time Oscar nominee Annette Bening is no stranger to the stage having started her acting career in theater. Above, Bening performs a compilation of four Ruth Draper vignettes in “Ruth Draper’s Monologues,” scheduled to run through May 18 at the Geffen Playhouse.

REVIEW: Annette Bening pays fine tribute in ‘Ruth Draper’s Monologues’ (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

11/19

“CSI” alum William Petersen made his Los Angeles stage debut in this year’s “Slowgirl” at the Geffen Playhouse. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

12/19

Tom Hiddleston returned to the stage as the title character in Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus” after playing Loki in “Thor,” “The Avengers” and “Thor: The Dark World.” The production opened at the Donmar Warehouse in London on Dec. 17 to glowing reviews and continues through Feb. 13. (Johan Persson / Associated Press)

13/19

Ethan Hawke took on the title role in the Lincoln Center Theater’s production of “Macbeth” that opened on Nov. 21, 2013, and closed Jan. 12. (T Charles Erickson / Associated Press)

14/19

Daniel Radcliffe went from boy wizard in “Harry Potter” to baring all in a Broadway revival of Peter Shaffer’s 1973 Tony-winning play “Equus.”

The casting of the “Harry Potter” frontman as the psychologically disturbed stable boy caused a stir as the then 17-year-old would appear nude in one scene.

Radcliffe wowed critics and earned a Drama Desk nomination for his role. (Uli Weber / Associated Press)

15/19

Jude Law, who played the title role in 2009, and most of the British cast transported the Donmar Warehouse production from the Wyndham’s Theatre in London to Broadway’s Broadhurst Theatre after a successful run. (Johan Persson / Associated Press)

16/19

Julia Roberts made her Broadway debut in the revival of Richard Greenberg’s “Three Days of Rain,” which opened April 12, 2006. Paul Rudd, above, and Bradley Cooper also starred in the play that called for actors to play roles from two generations of family members. (Joan Marcus / Associated Press)

17/19

Oscar winner Denzel Washington and Oscar-nominated actress Viola Davis portrayed Troy Maxson and Troy’s wife, Rose in the 2010 version of “Fences.” Their portrayals in the August Wilson play netted the pair lead actor Tony Awards. (Joan Marcus / Associated Press)

18/19

Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman, both with impressive stage and screen credits, starred in Keith Huff’s “A Steady Rain.”

The two-person play, which cast the duo as a pair of cops, opened Sept. 29, 2009. (Joan Marcus / AP)

19/19

Oscar-winner Al Pacino got to recite the famous “Hath not a Jew eyes” speech multiple times as Shylock in both the 2004 film and the 2010 Broadway production of “The Merchant of Venice.” (Joan Marcus / Associated Press)

By Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times Theater Critic

June 7, 2013 7 AM PT

NEW YORK — If you were to incarnate the spirit of Broadway — the talent, the showmanship, the stamina for roller coaster rides — Nathan Lane would likely be your man.

A first banana with the most hilarious holler since Lou Costello’s “Hey, Abbott!,” Lane is one of the few performers working today who has what might be called a Pavlovian relationship with his audience: Ever since his legendary turn in the musical version of Mel Brooks’ “The Producers,” the mere sight of him onstage causes theatergoers to start foaming at the mouth in anticipation of laughter.

Happy as Lane is to have been given the seemingly ceaseless opportunity to play lusty Broadway con man Max Bialystock, he hardly wants to be defined by one role or feel compelled to keep repeating the same surefire shtick.

FULL COVERAGE: Tonys 2013

“Everyone should have that kind of success in their lives, but there was a backlash,” Lane said, lounging backstage at the Lyceum Theatre, where this two-time Tony winner has just racked up another nomination for his performance in Douglas Carter Beane’s “The Nance.” “They want you to continue doing what they just loved you in. When I did ‘Butley’ after ‘The Producers,’ people were shocked that I was using a British accent even though I had made my debut in an old [Noel] Coward play.”

A connoisseur of ironies, Lane acknowledged that some ardent fans of “The Producers” ultimately turned on the show itself: “You’d hear, ‘Oh, it wasn’t that good.’ It was like they had awakened with a very expensive hooker and were ashamed that they had given away so much.”

Lane’s theatrical choices since “The Producers” have been purposefully varied. A good chunk of time was devoted to “The Addams Family,” a critical flop that had a healthy Broadway run. Maybe too healthy.

Lane’s basset hound eyes had a weary droop to them, perhaps because we talked when “The Nance” was in previews and undergoing last-minute revisions. Still, a long haul in a splashy theme-park venture like “The Addams Family” has to be depleting. Lane confided that, at 57, he’s through with musicals.

“You reach a certain point in this life and say, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I think I’ve covered that.’ Perhaps if some tremendous thing came along, but I would really think twice about it.”

After removing his Gomez Addams pencil mustache, Lane took on one of the most herculean roles in the American theater: the pipe-dream-puncturing Hickey in Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh,” a part that’s about as potent an antidote to the frivolity of “The Addams Family” as an actor could find.

PHOTOS: Hollywood stars on stage

Lane called his performance in Robert Falls’ revival at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre the best experience of his theatrical life. He got to work with his friend Brian Dennehy in a drama that has meant a great deal to him ever since he discovered it as a kid in a collection of O’Neill plays.

“Because of the description of Hickey and my Irish Catholic roots, I thought maybe one day I could play the role. But I also needed to shake things up and challenge myself as an actor. In many ways, I felt that I had come home.”

Lane said he’s not the least bit sore that the production didn’t move to New York: “I wanted to do it in Chicago because I love Chicago so much and because the audiences there are quite frankly better. They’re better theatergoers. They’re like Londoners — it’s part of their lives. They’re hungry for that kind of challenging experience.”

Of course, Lane is delighted to be starring once again on Broadway — his true home, no matter what he says about Chicago — in an ambitious new play set in 1930s New York about a vaudeville “nance” named Chauncey Miles.

By day a semi-furtive homosexual cruising Greenwich Village automats for a pickup, Chauncey is at night a flaming queen onstage, performing as a kind of gay minstrel in a burlesque act. As conservative in his politics as he is cynical in his personal life, he finds love offstage and success on it. But how long will society (or his own self-hatred) tolerate his happiness?

PHOTOS: Arts and culture in pictures by The Times

In the Tony race for lead actor in a play, Lane faces stiff competition from Tom Hanks (“Lucky Guy”) and Tracy Letts (“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”), but any role that puts both his comic and serious dramatic chops to the test is for him its own reward.

“I thought the play was beautiful, funny and wildly theatrical in the notion that the structure was going from serious scenes to the burlesque show and back and forth,” he said. “It was also dealing with a fascinating piece of history.

“Everyone thinks about Stonewall when they think of gay history,” he elaborated, making reference to the 1969 Greenwich Village riots that sparked the modern gay liberation movement, “and not so much about what came beforehand.”

When asked whether he, as an openly gay performer, has any special insight into Chauncey’s character, Lane demurred: “Apart from what you might have read in the New York Times, self-loathing hasn’t been a problem of mine. I had many other issues growing up, but that wasn’t one of them. Although I’m very sympathetic to people who have gone through that, and I can certainly relate to the concept.”

If the tone sounds defensive, it’s because Lane has had to fight to elude pigeonholes. He bristles at limiting categories such as “gay actor” or “musical theater performer,” though this doesn’t prevent him from accepting parts when they’re right for him: “It’s not like I think, ‘Oh, another gay role. They’re like barbiturates — you can only take so many!’”

CHEAT SHEET: Spring Arts Preview

Joking that today he’s typecast either as a “crazed heterosexual producer [taking advantage] of little old ladies or a drag queen,” Lane admitted to being a bit disappointed that more film work didn’t follow “The Birdcage,” the Mike Nichols film he starred in opposite Robin Williams. This was supposed to be his movie breakthrough, though, he quickly emphasized, in that charmingly superstitious, hubris-avoiding manner of actors, that he’s just grateful to be working.

“It’s not that I need to be starring in a franchise film to feel that I’ve made it,” he added.

A bona fide Broadway star who still has box office clout, Lane knows that the theater is where he has the best opportunity to widen his range, though a recurring role on the CBS television drama “The Good Wife” has unexpectedly opened doors by casting him in an unfamiliar light.

“If I had known that all people wanted me to do was be severe and repressed and slightly ambiguous, I could have given them that long ago,” he said.

Beloved in theatrical circles for keeping the tradition of Bert Lahr and Zero Mostel alive, Lane invoked another comic genius when asked about his role models: Jackie Gleason.

“I loved Gleason,” he said. “I was fascinated by him. He was very funny, screamingly funny, but then he was a wonderful serious actor and had such pathos. There was a well of sadness there.”

Lane is aware that he too has a bit of a reputation for being a brilliant funnyman with “a dark, troubled soul” but said that it’s been “totally blown out of proportion.”

“I’m Irish Catholic, and I think that says it all. I’ve overcome a lot. And I’m in a very good place.”

[email protected]

twitter.com\charlesmcnulty¿