An Actor’s Dream and Dread

It’s exhausting to be the king.

Minutes after the curtain falls on “The Producers,” with cheers still ringing in his ears, Brad Oscar hustles up the stairs to his second-floor dressing room in the St. James Theatre and tries to catch his breath.

He’s drenched in sweat. He’s yawning every two minutes. As the clock inches past 11:30 on a steamy night, his friendly blue eyes have the slightly dazed look of a man who has won the war but taken a beating.

“This was a good crowd,” says the 37-year-old actor playing Max Bialystock, the so-called King of Broadway, in Mel Brooks’ hit show. “Not raucous but noisy. On a night like this, I don’t have to work so hard.”

Please. In one of the most taxing roles ever written for a Broadway musical, Oscar is on stage for nearly all of the three-hour show. He sings and dances, struts, bellows, shouts and booms his way through a part that physically drains him each time he takes the stage. Eight times a week.

Working at a manic pace has become the defining reality of Oscar’s life since he was handed the plum role of Bialystock in April. And it remains a hallmark of the show that still hums with relentless energy and comedic flair 15 months after opening night. As “The Producers” cruises into a second boffo year, the show is preparing to launch the first of two national tours, including a special Los Angeles engagement with two marquee names set to begin in April 2003.

Oscar’s meteoric rise in the New York company, from an obscure understudy to the juiciest role on Broadway, has become the stuff of legend and a key ingredient of the show’s success. But his unexpected celebrity has also had a downside. He had to live up to extraordinary expectations in taking over a high-profile part made famous by Nathan Lane, his Tony Award-winning predecessor, and earlier by Zero Mostel in a beloved 1968 movie. More important, he inherited the role at a moment when “The Producers” was hit by critical and financial turbulence, and its future as a musical that might run for years was in doubt. Initially passed over when it came time to replace Lane, Oscar vaulted back into the spotlight when the first replacement, British stage star Henry Goodman, was fired after only four weeks.

The story of how Oscar’s performance stabilized the show and helped put it back on course offers a fascinating glimpse of the creative and financial forces driving one of Broadway’s most successful productions. It also shows how a modest, even-tempered actor like Oscar--something of a rarity on the Great White Way--managed to survive a backstage pressure cooker and thrive in a world where watching your back is no less important than watching your cues.

Indeed, some were openly skeptical when he took over as Bialystock, seeing dark clouds over the St. James Theatre: Could the show overcome the much-ballyhooed departures of Lane and Matthew Broderick, a duo that was the top box office draw for Broadway’s biggest hit? Could the musical keep making buckets of money? And could Oscar, who looked and sounded like Lane, ever make the part his own?

As new cast members settle into the show--including TV star Steven Weber, who has replaced Broderick as nerdy accountant Leo Bloom--the audiences who rise to cheer each night have answered all of these questions. Oscar has blossomed in the part, and tickets remain scarce for the tale of Max Bialystock, a schlockmeister producer who bilks millions from little old lady investors by staging “Springtime for Hitler,” a show intended to be a Broadway flop.

“It’s great to see an actor like Brad grab a role and put his own stamp on a character,” said Susan Stroman, who won Tony awards for the show’s direction and choreography. “You don’t always see this kind of evolution on Broadway. Brad’s really cruising now. He’s got it down.”

But it wasn’t always so easy.

On the night of April 16, Oscar stood on stage for the first time as Max Bialystock, instead of as Lane’s understudy. Although he had played the role 72 times before, filling in after the star developed nodules on his vocal cords, the producers of a Broadway show that had been raking in millions--and won a record 12 Tony awards--were as nervous as their new leading man.

Less than 48 hours earlier, they had fired Goodman, an almost unheard-of move that sparked an overnight media furor. The actor simply didn’t click in the role, insiders said, and audiences weren’t laughing. The show paid off the $480,000 remaining on Goodman’s contract through the end of the year and sent him packing.

“Oy,” says Oscar, recalling the tumult.

In two weeks, critics would come to review the new cast, and if they were savage, “The Producers” might have gone from being untouchable to just another run-of-the-mill phenomenon, New York Post drama columnist Michael Riedel said. “They could have taken a major financial hit--at least in the long term.”

As the curtain rose on that performance, the cast was in turmoil, roiled by Goodman’s hiring and firing. Weber, who was struggling to fill Broderick’s shoes, had spent 10 weeks honing a performance with Goodman, and now he had to learn new chemistry with a new star.

Meanwhile, some observers were blasting the decision by the show’s producers to continue charging $480 each for a select number of tickets, to compete with scalpers. How could they justify such inflated prices to see a new, untested set of actors?

“There was tension,” said Oscar, recalling the backstage mood. “And during the opening moment something strange happened. In the script I say, ‘How dare they insult me in this manner? I am Max Bialystock!’

“And, you know, it was like an out-of-body experience. I heard those words, and I thought, My God, I am Max Bialystock. What a story!”

How did it begin? With a call on Oscar’s cell phone, like every other twist and turn in his life with the show.

When he was first cast in November 2000 as a swing--an understudy ready to perform up to seven different roles in the musical--Oscar says he got the news on a phone call as he was entering an airplane restroom (“my private office”) on a St. Louis runway. When he was cast three months later as Franz Liebkind, the lunatic Nazi playwright who pens “Springtime for Hitler,” his cell phone rang again, this time in a noisy New York airport.

But the biggest call came on the evening of April 14, when Oscar attended the opening-night party for “The Elephant Man” at Tavern on the Green in Central Park. He knew something was up when he heard Stroman’s voice on the other end. It was almost 11.

“Can you talk now?” she asked urgently, telling him to put down his cheese plate and find a quiet place in the restaurant.

Then came the bombshell: Goodman had just been fired, and the producers wanted Oscar to replace him immediately. The role was his. Would he do it?

“I told her I’d think about it,” he deadpanned, recalling the moment. Then he switched into a mock serious tone, echoing one of the show’s funniest lines: “This decision could very well affect the rest of my career. I shall have to think about it. I’ll do it!”

There was no shortage of gratitude on the other end. “Thank you for saving ‘The Producers’ twice,” Stroman said, referring first to his assumption of the Liebkind part--which he inherited when the original actor injured his knee--and now the biggest role of all.

“Hello dahling,” said Anne Bancroft, when Oscar returned Mel Brooks’ congratulatory call minutes later. Brooks couldn’t come to the phone at that moment, his wife explained delicately, because he was talking with Goodman.

“Oy,” said Oscar.

He was thunderstruck. But smart enough to know that Stroman’s offer also reflected the turmoil enveloping the show. The buzz on the street was that Goodman and Weber were having difficulty settling into their roles. Backstage, the verdict was more blunt: With Goodman leading the cast, some feared, “The Producers” might be in artistic and financial jeopardy.

“When you’re talking about a show with the long-term franchise prospects of ‘The Producers,’ all casting decisions are critical, and none more so than the very first major cast changes,” said Jed Bernstein, president of the League of American Theatres and Producers. “What you do with that first change sets the tone for all future changes and sends a message to your audience.

“For ‘The Producers,’ ” he added, “the issue is not whether it’s going to be hard to get a ticket now, in 2002, but whether it’s hard in the summer of 2008.”

Despite Goodman’s bona fide credentials, producers insisted when they cast him that the show was the real star. Audiences would still be entertained, they predicted, so it wasn’t necessary to bring in more celebrities like Lane and Broderick. Yet Goodman seemed awkward from the start. He took a dark, method actor’s approach, dampening Brooks’ wacky satire. Where Lane was larger than life, Goodman played the role like a wizened Jimmy Durante.

“The St. James Theatre went from being a place where I looked forward to going to work, to a place that was depressing, a place where I said, ‘Oh, my God, I’ve got to go to work again,’ ” said Gary Beach, the dazzling Tony-winning actor who plays Roger Debris, a flamboyant gay director. “Suddenly, there was a sadness surrounding the show. And there was a feeling that it might not be the same again--that we had lost it.”

Even today, some cast members seem to be in mourning for the good old days on West 44th Street, when Lane and Broderick got nightly ovations.

“I still see Nathan and Matthew, and Nathan told me the other night, ‘I miss being together,’ ” said Cady Huffman, the Tony Award-winning actress who plays Swedish sex-bomb secretary Ulla. “It was such a special time, and we all know that it won’t happen again in our lives.”

But investors’ financial expectations had not changed. The show, which cost $10.5 million to produce, made back its initial outlay in less than nine months. When the St. James is sold out, as on most nights, the musical typically grosses $1.1 million in a week--more than any other show on Broadway. The idea that such a well might suddenly run dry was unthinkable to corporate backers.

This was the bubbling caldron Oscar stepped into when he took over the role. Critics were coming soon, and there was barely enough time for him and Weber to invent and polish their own stage chemistry. Cast members were “freaking tired,” Huffman said, and Stroman called for a marathon rehearsal the next day. The hard work of keeping the magic alive began.

Almost any other show might have cracked under the pressure. But “The Producers” was blessed with a deep supporting cast that contributes as much, if not more, to the production as the two main stars. Beach, Huffman and Roger Bart, who plays Carmen Ghia, Debris’ “common-law assistant,” performed crucial featured roles. And standing behind them was a richly talented ensemble.

“This is the key difference between the movie and the Broadway version of ‘The Producers,’ ” Huffman said. “In the movie, there are other characters who are basically peripheral. But in the live show, they are vital to the story. They play a central role and the audience picks up on this.”

“The Producers’ ” extraordinary depth was on display April 16 when a new Bialystock took command. And so was its emotional life. Oscar received rousing applause and the cast was relieved.

“Brad stepped into the role of Max Bialystock at a time when all of us were under immense pressure to show that we still had the magic in us,” recalls Jeffrey Denman, a former supporting cast member and the author of “A Year With ‘The Producers.’ ” “His performance helped us regain what we had.”

Others knocked wood, saying the show had dodged a bullet.

“The Henry Goodman experience scared” the producers, Weber said. “It showed them that this unsinkable show wasn’t so immune after all. They knew that they had to find a way to keep the show attractive and also make tons of money. They realized that we could be hurt if they didn’t do the right thing.”

Audiences typically rise to their feet and cheer as the production ends, whether they’ve been a rambunctious crowd or a sleepy bunch. Either way, says Beach, the verdict should be that this show is better than the hype.

“It was crucial that, after all the dust settled, the reviews would say the show is still great,” he said. “That’s what we had to get out there. And it’s not as easy as you might think, because ‘The Producers’ take an amazing amount of energy to perform well eight times a week.”

As curtain time approaches for a Wednesday matinee, the theater ripples with tension.

“Five minutes! Five minutes!” crackles the backstage intercom in Oscar’s worn but clean dressing room. The King of Broadway puts on his pants one leg at time, adjusts two body microphones, and finishes off a cheese-stuffed bagel, heading downstairs for the opening scene.

“I’m on the Max Bialystock diet,” he cracks, adjusting his tie and fedora. “No workouts. Just endurance.”

Minutes later, he’s on stage, kicking off a 30-minute run that begins with the show’s first extended song. As the audience applauds, he rushes off stage right for the next scene, burying himself under a pile of newspapers on a couch in his producer’s office, getting ready to meet Leo Bloom.

The two spar verbally, then Oscar charges into a mock-seduction scene opposite a hyper-sexed little old lady. When she dashes off stage, he turns once again to Bloom, pleading with him to help produce a deliberate flop. The stint ends with “We Can Do It,” an energetic number in which he climbs over a sofa, chases Bloom and dances with him.

As Oscar finally exits, breathing heavily, massive new scenery is rolling into place backstage. The producer’s suite has become an accounting office and cast members are racing into place. There is little room for anyone in the wings, except for chorus girls who are sprinting upstairs from a dressing room under the stage and tearing around corners, waiting to go on. Calibrated to a split-second, the choreography behind the scenes is more complex than the dance numbers on stage.

“Look out Broadway, here I come!” echoes the last line of “I Wanna Be a Producer,” and Oscar is set to go back on stage again--this time for the entire 50 minutes remaining in the first act. He’s had seven minutes to rest.

By now the cast has been carefully reading the audience, and the verdict is in on today’s show: “Oh, honey--they’re old!” ensemble member Kathy Fitzgerald grumbles to Oscar, as she hurries off stage. “They’re on heart and lung machines!”

Moments later, Beach and his sidekick, Bart, bring down the house as a tres-gay theatrical couple. Laughter fills the theater and the crowd seems to get noisier.

When Bialystock asks Beach’s character if he will direct Liebkind’s ridiculous play, the pompous thespian says he finds the work fascinating, adding: “I, for one, never realized that the Third Reich meant Germany.”

Some crowds roar at the line, as they do this afternoon. But, Beach notes, “there are nights when I say this, and half the audience is nodding in agreement. They didn’t know this either. Not to be insulting, but every show is different.”

The pace is relentless and early in the second act Oscar does something unusual. While Huffman and Weber sing “That Face,” a love duet, the actor sneaks down a flight of stairs off stage left, turns into a narrow hallway and opens a door that puts him onto West 44th Street for a breath of fresh air.

Crowds fill the sidewalk and a bus full of senior citizens is emptying in front of the St. James Theatre. “Who is that?” yells one woman, pointing at Oscar, in full costume, in the doorway. He quickly ducks inside, and the second act pulls him back in.

Less than 15 minutes later, “The Producers” hits a peak with the show-stopping “Springtime for Hitler.” It’s a comic masterpiece, a jaw-dropping sendup of Broadway anthems that allows the audience to experience firsthand the show’s delicious twist: While a song celebrating Hitler’s rise to power may be crude and tasteless, 1,700 people give it an ovation.

As dancing “hotsy-totsy” Nazis enter from stage right and left, Beach--now playing a gay Adolf Hitler--soars from a lift and sings “Heil myself, heil to me. I’m the Kraut who’s out to change our history.”

Backstage, ensemble members are hurriedly tearing off costumes, putting on new outfits, reassembling in the wings and rushing back on. Like other cast members, Huffman huffs through several costume changes in seven frenetic minutes, first appearing as a Third Reich chorus girl, then as a tap-dancing Bavarian peasant and finally as a sequined Marlene Dietrich, high-kicking her way across the stage as bombs explode in the background.

Some three hours after it began, the matinee ends and cast members scatter to their dressing rooms. The whole show will begin again at 8 p.m. “Halftime!” shouts one singer, dashing out for a bite to eat. “One more!”

Good luck, good luck, good luck.

Friends and family shower Oscar with good wishes and flowers as curtain time nears on May 1. He’s played Bialystock many times, he tells himself, so there is no reason to be nervous. But tonight is different. The critics are coming.

“The reviews come out a lot faster when the critics leave at intermission,” he cracks in the show’s opening number, and people laugh. That’s a good sign, Oscar thinks to himself, an early barometer of how the musical is playing.

More and bigger laughs greet Beach and Bart as they sing “Keep It Gay,” and the first act ends to tumultuous cheers. By the time Oscar finishes “Betrayed,” a bravura second-act number in which Bialystock recapitulates the entire show, he seems to own the Wednesday-night audience.

“Brad showed what he was made up of on that second opening night,” Stroman says. “He’s a consummate professional, and we were all pleased.”

So were most of the critics.

All said the show remained a blockbuster. Howard Kissel, in the New York Daily News, wrote that Oscar “has a better voice and more musicality than [Lane].... He has become more confident and expansive. His shining bald head and often popping eyes give him the look of an apoplectic walrus, which adds to the comedy of the part.”

The New York Post’s Clive Barnes called Oscar “superb,” and Newsday’s Linda Winer praised him as “a major talent with a lovely, comfortable sense of absurdity. He finds more subtle notes in the character than Lane did.”

But some couldn’t shake Lane’s ghost. The New York Times’ Ben Brantley said Oscar had yet to find himself in the role, adding that he “is doing his level best to channel Mr. Lane’s Tony-winning performance. The Lane-style grimaces, the exasperated line readings, the flamboyant gestures are often rendered with conscientious exactitude.”

Baloney, thought other cast members. Denman said the role of Bialystock is one of the more difficult to play in the Broadway canon, and only a few actors--including Oscar--have the inner discipline to play it well. “It doesn’t matter if you think he’s doing a Lane impersonation,” he said. “It’s what he brings to the role that is relevant.”

Others suggested “The Producers’ ” new star was following an honorable Broadway tradition of replacing the supposedly unreplaceable star. On “Theatre Talk,” a local television show, host Susan Haskins mused that the musical needed to forget Nathan Lane and find its own Herschel Bernardi.

Back in 1966, after Mostel left the original production of “Fiddler on the Roof,” producers replaced him with Bernardi, and the hit show kept rolling. Not all casting changes work so well. When Julie Andrews had to leave “Victor/Victoria” on Broadway for health reasons, she was replaced by Raquel Welch. The buzz was bad, a chill set in at the box office, and the show soon folded.

In recent weeks, Oscar has tinkered with dialogue and shtick that worked for Lane but not for him. Some changes simply reflect the fact that the show biz-savvy crowds who flocked to “The Producers” when it opened have been replaced by “normal” customers who might not get Brooks’ inside jokes.

There is a moment, for example, when Bialystock tells a clueless Bloom the two cardinal rules of being a producer. Rule No. 1, Lane would say calmly, “Never put your own money in the show.” Rule No. 2, he’d say, screaming into Broderick’s ear--and summoning the ghost of Jackie Gleason--is “never put your own money in the show.”

Oscar tried that, but audiences didn’t get the humor. He retired the gag, simply repeating the line twice and getting bigger laughs.

No longer limited by an understudy’s deference to the star, he’s playing with the role and experimenting nightly. Oscar is clearly more comfortable now, performing Bialystock with a comic ferocity that recalls Mostel, and he has no lack of guidance from the show’s creators. After one matinee, he canceled his dinner plans with a reporter when Brooks asked to speak with his new star that evening.

“I want to see Brad!” boomed the comic legend, wearing a blue sport jacket and tie and climbing the stairs, jaunty jolly, to Oscar’s dressing room. Once inside, he delivered “notes,” critiquing the just-concluded performance. The message that afternoon was clear: Oscar should relax more and not try to land laughs so hard. He didn’t need to have heart attacks on stage to communicate that a big laugh was coming.

“What are you going to do, argue with Mel?” shrugged Oscar, recalling the meeting. “He’s always been right on the money. He knows what works.”

In the ensuing weeks, Brooks and Stroman would visit Oscar’s dressing room several times. They’d also offer suggestions to Weber. The show, finally, seemed to be out of the woods.

Still, its long-term financial future is unclear.

On the surface, “The Producers” remains golden. A national touring company will open in Pittsburgh on Sept. 10, and when it reaches the Pantages Theatre in April 2003, Jason Alexander will join the cast as Bialystock for a special Los Angeles engagement. Producers have offered the role of Bloom to Martin Short. During that same month, a second national company will open in Boston, and the two companies will tour the heartland.

“This is a show that will have a very powerful attraction for people in Southern California,” said Gordon Davidson, artistic director of the Ahmanson Theatre, which is offering the show as part of its subscription season.

“They’re looking at a six-month engagement,” he adds. “And if they’re flexible, they could be pleasantly surprised and extend it even more.”

It’ll run for 20 years, boosters say. But like any other show, “The Producers’ ” New York run will be extended incrementally, in six-month blocks of ticket sales. So far, the show has a fat advance sale through December, but it remains to be seen if this box office power will carry over into the New Year, which has traditionally been Broadway’s slowest season.

Oscar and Weber are signed through Dec. 31, and then the producers may decide to recruit a pair of new stars.

Will the new actors, too, keep customers satisfied?

“That’s the big question,” said Ken Brown, who is Oscar’s dresser and a savvy veteran of many shows. “We don’t know what long-run sales will be as the show changes. Until you know, you can’t be sure.”

The only certainty is that “The Producers” will keep people laughing on West 44th Street through the fall--and Oscar will still be pinching himself each night on stage. To make sure it’s all real.

“I still get goose bumps being up there,” he says, packing his gear after the show and yawning once more. “Part of me still can’t believe this happened. But the other part says: ‘It happened. Now get some rest.’ ”

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Josh Getlin is a Times staff writer.