Lansbury ready to ‘chill’

NEW YORK -- With her first Broadway play in nearly 25 years nearing an end, Angela Lansbury is contemplating a vacation and says she has no immediate plans to return to work.

“I’m going to go back to my home in Ireland for a spell just to kind of chill,” the four-time Tony winner said during a recent telephone interview, contemplating the Aug. 19 close of Terrence McNally’s “Deuce.” “Then I will come back to New York and probably go out to the [West] Coast to see my family. I am going to kind of mix and match my time between the coast and New York from here on.

“I really want to live the New York life and to be able to go to the theater and the opera and the ballet and indulge myself in all the things I missed for many, many years because I was always working. I don’t intend to work nonstop. I’m not going to do that anymore.”

Not that she didn’t enjoy her stint in “Deuce,” particularly performing with her costar, Marian Seldes.

They portray tennis doubles champions who are reunited at the U.S. Open. She called Seldes “an extraordinary woman” and “one of the dearest people I have ever known.”

Lansbury, 81, said working in “Deuce” is “a very intense experience ... certainly at my time of life. It takes a lot of energy, which, thank goodness, I have.

“People were so pleased that I came back,” she said with a laugh. “They proceeded to give me an absolutely marvelous welcome. That’s very heartwarming when you have been away for as long as I was.”

Is there more theater in her future?

“I couldn’t say. I always say, ‘Never say never.’ But I don’t really know. There certainly isn’t anything pending, although a lot of plays are sent to me. But I really don’t want to be tied into a long run on Broadway. You have to sign for a year.”

Then, she added, “I don’t want to work that hard anymore.”