Who would play Lady Macbeth?

When Britain’s Eddie Izzard made his Broadway debut this year in “A Day in the Death of Joe Egg,” he surprised many with his dramatic turn in the Peter Nichols play about a couple coping with a severely disabled child.

He also received strong reviews and a Tony nomination for the role, which he earlier played in London.

Not bad for a man who made a name for himself as a cross-dressing stand-up comic. Now the two-time Emmy winner (for his HBO special “Dress to Kill”) is amid a world tour of his one-man show “Sexie,” which played six sold-out performances at the Wiltern Theatre this month.

But success may have cost Izzard some stage cred. He says he had to decline when Mel Brooks approached him one night during the L.A. run about appearing as Max Bialystock -- the part originated by Nathan Lane -- in the London production of “The Producers,” reportedly set to open late next year in the West End. “I love ‘The Producers,’ but I have a film commitment.”

He does, however, have ideas for his next appearance on the Great White Way: “I’d like to do ‘Macbeth’ and take it straight to Broadway. Maybe in 2005.”

Macbeth? As in Shakespeare?

“Well,” he says, “I have to do something that people aren’t expecting.”

-- Lisa Fung