Word: broadway
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...with it. When The Producers came calling, it was hardly a sure thing. A screen-to-stage adaptation of a Mel Brooks comedy three decades old, it has no hit songs and very little in the way of witty dialogue. The plot is tinsel-thin: Max, a crooked Broadway producer, and his nerdy accountant Leo concoct a scheme to make millions off a show that's calculated to flop...
...when Broderick and Lane got together for a rehearsal, something unexpected happened. They made each other better. "It was very intimate," says Susan Stroman, who directed Lane and Broderick in The Producers both on Broadway and in the upcoming movie version. "I knew immediately, when Matthew said his first line, 'Mr. Bialystock, anybody here...
...with his permanently boyish features, his bite-sized stature, his slightly adenoidal voice, he's the quintessence of the light comic actor. But Lane sees something else in him: a sly, versatile mimic, with stage smarts that won him a Tony the first time he ever set foot on Broadway (in Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs, when he was 21). He pushes Broderick to let that side of him show. "He's very spontaneous," Lane says of his co-star. "He's more improvisational than he gives himself credit for. I very often have forced him into...
...extremely faithful adaptation. It's more Singin' in the Rain than Chicago: fast-paced, no darkness, no interior fantasy sequences, just gags a-go-go. "It's packed full of comedy," Stroman says. "It's a comedy musical more than it is a musical comedy." Much of the Broadway cast returns, although two key roles are taken over by movie stars: Will Ferrell as a neo-Nazi playwright, and Uma Thurman as a Swedish casting-couch cutie. (At 6-ft.-plus, both actors tower over their leading men: Broderick is 5 ft. 8 in., and he's the tall...
...course, the big screen is a long way from Broadway. "Matthew has the advantage over Nathan," Brooks says. "He's done a lot more films. Nathan very carefully has to be on his toes to keep up with the nuances of Matthew's performance, because movies are very focused and very pointed. You don't do close-ups onstage." True, but with the cameras right in their faces, it's more obvious than ever how much fun Broderick and Lane are having. You can actually see the glances zapping back and forth in the climactic courtroom scene, and when Lane...