Paternity Suits Him

Peter Michael Goetz, who is playing the patriarchal misfit in “Freedomland” on South Coast Repertory’s main stage, has played father figures before. He portrayed the father of the groom to Steve Martin’s father of the bride twice on screen in the “Father of the Bride” movies.

“I keep hoping they’re going to do a ‘Father of the Bride III,’ ” the white-bearded actor says, “not because it would be any good, but because it would make some money.”

Goetz says he still gets residuals from the two movies, “especially around June, when there are lots of weddings.” (Perhaps as comic relief from the real thing, families of the brides and grooms tend to rent the videos in droves at that time of year.) “I get a few thousand dollars,” Goetz notes. “The surprise checks are wonderful.”

He also played Matthew Broderick’s father on Broadway for about two years in “Brighton Beach Memoirs.” In that 1983 comedy, Goetz thought at first that playwright Neil Simon had based the character on his own father. “I was petrified because I didn’t know what his father was like,” Goetz recalls. “I’m not Jewish, and it’s a Jewish play.”

During the first two days of rehearsals, Simon would say to him, “You’re getting too fiddler-on-the-roof.” On the third day, after Goetz made adjustments, the playwright told him, “Thank God. I want you to be the father I wish I had, not the father I had.” That took the pressure off, Goetz says. “Since I didn’t have to be anybody real, I could be me.”

In Amy Freed’s “Freedomland,” which plays for nearly two acts of benevolent mayhem like a wacky 1990s “You Can’t Take It With You,” Goetz’s larger-than-life role as Noah seems “sort of like the grandpa” in that 1936 Kaufman-and-Hart comedy, Goetz says.

But instead of Grandpa Vanderhof’s confrontations with the FBI and the IRS, Noah’s confrontations involve a more cosmic presence, God perhaps, usually signaled by a peculiar sting on the seat of his pants from an invisible, if farcical, agent.

Goetz, who spent 10 years at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, says the risk of failure in Costa Mesa is relatively mild compared with Broadway.

“When you work here, you feel a sense of community,” he says. “It’s a subscription audience and a limited run. You don’t feel that sense of community on Broadway.” Moreover, he says, he is surprised at how receptive the Orange County audience has been to “Freedomland,” despite its strong language. “Frankly, I’m amazed,” Goetz says. “We really thought we’d be playing to five or six people in the second act.”

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The pressure on Broadway, because of the high commercial stakes, “makes you feel like Charles Yeager going through the sound barrier,” he notes. And it can be traumatic: “I’ve done Broadway shows that closed in one night.”

Goetz starred as John Barrymore in “Ned and Jack” in 1981, with Colleen Dewhurst directing. They had done it off-Broadway to wonderful notices. “We took it to Broadway,” he recalls, “and I was walking to an interview in front of the theater, just like this one. The box-office man came out. He said, ‘Mr. Goetz, can you get your things out of here? They closed us down.’ The marquee lights went off as I was standing there. It was devastating.”

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* “Freedomland” continues through Sunday at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $28-$43. (714) 708-5555.