WITH AN EYE ON ... : Jerry Orbach takes to ‘Law & Order’ like a cop to the street

For over two decades, Jerry Orbach made beautiful music on and off Broadway in classic musicals such as “The Fantasticks” (in which he introduced the standard “Try to Remember”) “Carnival,” “Promises, Promises,” “Chicago” and “42nd Street.”

But, it’s been almost 10 years since Orbach appeared on the Great White Way. And that’s fine with him. He’s having the time of his life playing wry New York detective Lenny Brisco on NBC’s acclaimed series “Law & Order.”

“I’m starting to miss theater a little bit,” Orbach admits. “But not terribly, because I like the differences in the kind of work I do. I really am made for film to television. I have a lot of fun with sitcoms, too. That’s a great schedule, but film to television, like ‘Law & Order,’ has a depth and reality to it like feature films, but you don’t have to wait around as long as you do on feature films. It suits my temperament.”

Last year, Orbach says, the producers of “Law & Order” contacted him about replacing regular Paul Sorvino, who was leaving the series to pursue an operatic singing career. “I was thrilled,” says Orbach, who starred in his own short-lived 1987-88 CBS series, “The Law and 2Harry McGraw.”

Orbach had done a guest shot on the series the previous season. “When Sorvino was first there they asked me to come in and play a lawyer. They didn’t pay anything and I said to my agent, ‘I can’t do this. This is ridiculous.’ He said do it. It’s a prestige thing. It turned out to be a wonderful thing too, because they thought of me when Paul was leaving.”

Orbach admits, though, it was a tad difficult joining the ensemble of an established series. “These guys had been doing it for three seasons and you are kind of a new kid on the block,” he says. “But I have top billing, so I am sort of the old new kid on the block.”

Brisco is a great character for Orbach to sink his teeth into. “He’s a rule-bender,” Orbach says. “He has been established as a guy who cuts corners a little bit to get what he wants. He’s an old-fashioned detective. He loves figuring things out. We established he has been married twice and he’s AA. So we tried to make him interesting.”

It took Orbach years to convince producers that he was more than a musical comedy-performer. Even fellow actors, he says, thought he was just a song-and-dance man. “When I would get a straight play like ‘Six Rms Rv’ or ‘Scuba, Duba,’ they would get shocked.”

Finally, his career turned around thanks to his powerhouse performance as a corrupt New York cop in Sidney Lumet’s 1980 film “Prince of the City.”

“After ‘Prince of the City’ and some other movies like ‘Crimes & Misdemeanors,’ Steven Bochco’s office was doing that series ‘Cop Rock,’ where the cops sang,” Orbach recalls with a laugh. “One of my agents was talking with them. My agent said, ‘What about Jerry Orbach as the lieutenant?’ They said, ‘We love his work. Does he sing?’ So it came completely around full circle.”

Orbach accepted an opportunity to sing in the 1991 Oscar-winning Disney animated feature “Beauty and the Beast.” Orbach was the voice for the charming French candlestick Lumiere and performed the show-stopping tune “Be Our Guest.”

“It was fun,” Orbach says. “I think the biggest kick I got was when I first saw the character and it looked kind of like me. We did the voices first, and I didn’t know what he was going to look like. When they showed me a preliminary drawing, I flipped, because they kind of gave him my nose and the droopy eyes. It was great.”

“Law & Order” airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on NBC.