Lane gets serious about `Butley' at Huntington

By Ed Siegel, Globe Staff, 9/14/2003

When Nicholas Martin was hired, in 1999, the Huntington Theatre Company was particularly intrigued by his contacts with the New York theater scene and his widely applauded directing abilities.

Both those criteria came into play when the phone rang last spring and Martin was greeted by his friend Nathan Lane. Lane's widely unapplauded television series "Charlie Lawrence" had ended, and he wanted to do something meaty, something that one doesn't associate with situation comedies. Something like Eugene O'Neill's "A Moon for the Misbegotten."

"So we met in New York," said Martin, "and discussed the play, which is about an Irishman with similar demons that Nathan has, but we suspected that we could never cast the woman in time, and it's a part that has been miscast so often."

One night shortly after, following a guest appearance in "The Play What I Wrote" on Broadway, Lane went out to dinner with actors Kenneth Branagh and Benedick Bates, and Branagh suggested that Lane revive Simon Gray's "Butley." Bates's father, Alan, starred in the play, about an ultra-acerbic academic, when it premiered in 1972. Lane was intrigued and said to Bates the younger, "And you could play Joey," the lover who leaves Butley in the play (on the same day that his wife says she wants a divorce).

Branagh's suggestion was quite fortuitous. Not only is Martin a fan of the playwright (whom he likens to Harold Pinter and Alan Ayckbourn), he was also aware that Gray had been a fan of Lane's ever since the actor appeared in Gray's "The Common Pursuit."

This may be surprising to those who know Lane only from "The Producers" and musical comedy, but the guy is a serious actor as well. In Terrence McNally's "Love! Valour! Compassion!" and Jon Robin Baitz's "Mizlansky/Zilinsky," Martin said, "Nathan has been able to let it rip as far as his rage and emotional life is concerned. Nathan is a major actor who happens to be able to sing and is the funniest man in America right now. But he's a serious actor, and he wanted to come to a serious theater and do some work he could really sink his teeth into."

But is Lane the sex symbol Bates was when he played the part? "I think the part demands a kind of charisma that these two actors share," said Martin, "an energy and a sharpness that both of these actors have. Also, one of the reasons the play hasn't been revived -- there isn't a moment that's dated -- there's been nobody with that kind of energy, charisma, and facility with language that Nathan has.

"The challenge is, without sentimentality, to make his problems sympathetic to the audience -- so you're almost all the way home with Nathan, since he's such a simpatico actor. I thought it was a perfect marriage of actor and role and a great play for Boston, because it's such a complete satire of the academic life and environment."

Martin also has big shoes to fill. Pinter directed the original production with Bates, which Martin saw. "To tell you the truth, I wasn't aware of the directorial skill," he said. "It was all about the acting and the astonishing velocity of wit. It was amazing that any character could keep up a barrage the way Butley does."