In the New, Broadway-fied 'Addams Family,' It's the Addams Women Who Have Changed

REMEMBER the old Morticia Addams? She may not have been the most beautiful woman in the room by conventional standards, but there was no one more confident, more serene (in her morbid way), more certain of her womanly charms. Sometimes all her husband, Gomez, had to do was catch a glimpse of her to be carried away with passion. So what is Morticia doing at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater, in the person of Bebe Neuwirth (top left, with Carolee Carmello), fretting and singing about her fear of getting older and becoming less desirable? And why is Morticia's daughter, Wednesday (Krysta Rodriguez, above, with Wesley Taylor), wearing yellow?

Theater critics have had their say about the Broadway version of "The Addams Family," which opened on April 8. The New York Daily News ("New Broadway Musical Just Festers") called it "half-baked and already nibbled," putting the blame on the directors for having forgotten that for the Addamses, "macabre is normal." The Hollywood Reporter ("The Addams Family: Theater Review"), which concluded that for this show, "artistic inspiration pretty much ended with the pitch meeting," found the plot hackneyed, the humor flat and the music forgettable. The New Yorker, on whose pages Charles Addams's ghoulish family were born, regretted that Addams's "poisoned brew" had been "turned into Kool-Aid" ("Festering: The 'Addams Family' Musical") and that "a lot of talented people associated with the musical have got the wrong end of Addams's shtick."

(On the plus side, people are buying tickets like crazy. Nathan Lane makes the patriarch Gomez Addams a charmer, apparently through sheer force of will. The sets, especially the Manhattan skyline, are swell; it's a very entertaining conceit that the Addamses are New Yorkers, their strange old house sitting somewhere in the middle of Central Park.)

BUT what no one that I've read so far has mentioned is the social gendercide. Dashing Gomez, wacky Uncle Fester (Kevin Chamberlin), seemingly undead Lurch (Zachary James) and evil little Pugsley (Adam Riegler) have remained in character. But the Addams women have been -- if you'll forgive a touch of anatomical irony -- castrated.

Morticia has been turned into just another insecure middle-aged housewife. Wednesday, who was Goth before Goth was cool, has grown up overnight, fallen in love with a bland, mainstream boy and now just wants love sweet love. At times it's surprising that there aren't bluebirds and woodland creatures singing and dancing at her feet. At other times she's a nag. Even Grandma (Jackie Hoffman) has been taken down a peg. Her humor, once inspired by proud who-gives-a-damn insanity, is now based on old-age indignities like incontinence. (Seriously. Her biggest laugh line is "I just peed.")

The people behind the Broadway "Addams Family" have said that the characters are derived from the original Addams cartoons, not the 1960s television series or the two 1990s feature films. So this gives Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, who wrote the book, an excuse for not producing the Morticia, Wednesday and Grandma that we loved to fear and respect. Cheers to Carolyn Jones, Anjelica Huston and Christina Ricci, among others. But Brickman and Elice's interpretation of the largely inscrutable female cartoon characters says a lot about their assumptions (or wishes?) about what goes on (or should?) in women's minds.

As a result, the most inspiring woman in the Broadway show is Alice Beineke (Carmello), Wednesday's boyfriend's mother. Alice, who looks right at home in yellow, is so relentlessly sweet that she can't help writing and reciting insipid little poems in the middle of normal conversations. But during dinner, she undergoes a transformation.

Grandma offers her little grandson a powerful potion: "One sip of this and Mary Poppins turns into Medea." Pugsley intends it for Wednesday (apparently he's not that crazy about her new personality either), but Alice drinks it instead, and a lifetime of repressed emotions comes pouring out in her big number, "Waiting." Lurch's hand somehow ends up on Alice's breast. And she passes out on the dining room table. Unconscious but empowered.

Gossip Guy of the Week: Denzel Washington

CURRENT GIG "Fences," playing Troy Maxson, a Negro League baseball player turned garbageman, in the revival of August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1987 drama.

AGE 55

BORN AND RAISED Mount Vernon, N.Y. ("right on the edge of the Bronx").

ALMA MATER Fordham (where he majored in journalism).

AVAILABILITY Married to Pauletta Pearson since 1983.

BROADWAY PAST Brutus in "Julius Caesar," 2005. (Ben Brantley loved his monologues.) A hip young husband in "Checkmates," 1988. (Frank Rich couldn't understand what Washington and Ruby Dee were doing in a play this bad.)

OSCAR, OSCAR Best actor, 2002, "Training Day." Best supporting actor, 1989, "Glory."

REAL PEOPLE HE'S PLAYED Steven Biko, Ruben (Hurricane) Carter, Malcolm X.

BIG BREAK Playing young Dr. Phillip Chandler on NBC's "St. Elsewhere," 1982-88.

UNSEXIEST MAN ALIVE? "I know how to ugly up when I need to do it," he once told The Chicago Sun-Times. "I can let my hair grow on my face, pack on a few pounds and just look like a troll."


"Fences," by August Wilson, directed by Kenny Leon, Cort Theater, 138 West 48th Street, (212) 239-6200, telecharge.com. Opening night: April 26, 2010.

Gossip Girl of the Week: Kristin Chenoweth

CURRENT GIG The revival of "Promises, Promises," going all 1960s on us, playing a vulnerable sexual victim. It's a musical.

AGE 41

BORN AND RAISED Broken Arrow, Okla.

ALMA MATER Oklahoma State University.

AVAILABILITY Single.

TRADEMARKS Short (4-foot-11), high-pitched, with a talent for singing "from her hoo-hah," as she described it to Ellen DeGeneres.

BEST KNOWN FOR Being sassy but dark as little-sister Sally in "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" (her 1999 Tony) and being sassy but self-righteous as Glinda the Good Witch in "Wicked" (2004).

UNLESS YOU WATCH TV In which case she's probably best known for her role as a pie waitress on "Pushing Daisies" (her 2009 Emmy) and her two seasons playing a media consultant on "The West Wing" (2004-06). She also had a short-lived sitcom of her own, "Kristin" (2001).

HOW IT ALL STARTED, PART 2 On her way to opera school in Philadelphia, she went to an audition at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey. "Animal Crackers" there led to "Scapin" in New York and her Broadway debut in "Steel Pier" (1997).

HOW IT ALL STARTED, PART 1 As a little girl, she told The Palm Beach Post, "I would turn on my record player and I would sing myself to sleep to 'The Sound of Music.' "


"Promises, Promises," by Neil Simon, Burt Bacharach and Hal David; direced by Rob Ashford; Broadway Theater, 1681 Broadway, (212) 239-6200. Opening night: April 25, 2010.

What if Green Day Showed Up at 'American Idiot'?

YOU know how they're always saying, "The crowd went wild"? Well, it really did tonight at the St. James Theater right after the curtain call at "American Idiot."

It was already a pretty great evening. The cast was basking in the glowing reviews from The New York Times ("thrillingly raucous and gorgeously wrought") and elsewhere. My old pal Jon Pareles, the Times music critic, was in the audience. So was John Lahr of The New Yorker. And right behind Lahr? Green Day themselves, the makers of the feast. Everyone's head turned when they took their seats. Everyone applauded.

But the best was yet to come. After the show, after the curtain call, after the cast's multi-guitar curtain-call encore --- well, Green Day took the stage. "This is my first night on Broadway!" Billie Joe Armstrong shouted, and the band launched into the title song. And the cellphone cameras came out. (You're going to have to take my word for it that that's Armstrong above.) And then they did an encore. And just about everyone went home even happier than they'd expected to be.

Who needs to go to opening night?

Well, Did You Like the Play or Not?

IF you happen to be a hard-working young playwright with dreams, you could do worse than changing places with Dan LeFranc right now.

Late last week, LeFranc, 29, received the 2010 New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award. Which probably ought to be called the Outstanding Young Playwright Award or the Outstanding New Playwright Award, because it's given to someone whose work has had its New York premiere the year before. (The award will be officially presented at a May 13 gathering at the paper's red-and-glass Times Center auditorium.)

LeFranc won the award for "Sixty Miles to Silver Lake," about a divorced dad and his son on a long, tortured drive from the boy's soccer practice to the father's new apartment. The play was produced in TriBeCa by SoHo Rep and Page 73 Productions in early 2009.

"The majority of reviews were good, especially for a new play," LeFranc, 29, recalled in an e-mail exchange this week. "New plays tend to get beat up in New York. So, some reviews were excellent. Some were lukewarm. Obviously some were nasty -- but I didn't read those because I'm not a total masochist."

The funny part is that The New York Times review ("Father-Son Road Trip With Twists and Turns") wasn't one of the raves. Neil Genzlinger did start by declaring the work a "nifty new play." But "you begin to suspect" toward the end, he wrote, that "you've just seen a lot of technique but not much substance." Finally Genzlinger asks himself and us if a lot of the play isn't "right out of the Basic Domestic-Drama Plotlines manual."

If so, Edward Albee, Richard Greenberg and Lynn Nottage must think highly of that manual. They made up the award's selection committee, along with Scott Heller, Sam Sifton and Andrea Stevens of The Times; and Sylviane Gold, the program's chairwoman and a frequent contributor to The Times.

(Genzlinger, incidentally, is a great guy and a top-notch critic. As anyone who's ever reviewed anything soon learns, there are absolutely no "right" reactions to any work. Some of us just can't help getting excited when other people agree with us.)

Meanwhile, LeFranc is redistributing the praise. He thanks "every member of the production and development team," who "influenced the direction of the script immensely.

"And this especially includes all the people involved way back when I first wrote the play at Brown."

7 Playwright-y Facts About Dan LeFranc

1. He grew up in Southern California. The O.C.

2. He graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

3. He received his M.F.A. in playwriting from Brown. And became the John C. Russell Fellow in Playwriting there.

4. He moved to Brooklyn, from Providence, R.I., last fall.

5. The first stage show he ever saw was "Starlight Express." (For those who don't recognize the name: It was the '80s Andrew Lloyd Webber roller-skating/train musical.)

6. He coulda been a great shrink. (Because he describes the subjects of "Sixty Miles" as "a father and son, divorce, betrayal, guy talk and the inexplicable way time blurs when we're with our parents.")

7. He has 581 Facebook friends.

Where Has Jan Maxwell Been All My Life?

FOR me, it started with "The Royal Family" last fall. Rosemary Harris was the attraction, playing Fanny Cavendish, doyenne of the Barrymore-like theater family, and she was a joy. But then, suddenly, there was Jan Maxwell. Playing Julie Cavendish, the role Harris had defined a generation ago, Maxwell chewed the scenery (a lovely John Lee Beatty between-the-wars-apartment set) to bits and made having a hissy-fit look elegant.

In Variety, David Rooney called her "a willowy, fluttery delight as a self-dramatizing woman who thinks in stage directions," always aware of how her actions are playing, "even during the accelerating hysteria of a beyond-the-brink monologue." Gorgeous hysteria.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I saw "Lend Me a Tenor." Maybe you recognize the scene above: Anthony LaPaglia as Tito Morelli, an Italian opera star doing a concert in Cleveland, is having a typically understated discussion with his just-as-temperamental-as-he-is wife, Maria (Maxwell). Whenever she's onstage, she runs away with the show. Scene-stealing is too faint a word. She makes turning magazine pages an act of pure fury and frightening emotional clarity.

Jan. Maxwell. Say it soft, and it's almost like praying. If she does not win an armful of awards this year, something is very, very wrong.

7 Important Jan Maxwell Questions

1. Is she some fresh new ingenue who just happens to look mature and sophisticated onstage?

No! She's 53.

2. Then she's some worldly Brit who hasn't appeared in New York very much?

No. She was born and raised in North Dakota.

3. Why hasn't she made her mark until now?

She has. Two Tony nominations (for "Coram Boy" in 2007 and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," of all things, in 2005). And five, count 'em, five Drama Desk nominations, for "Scenes From an Execution," "Coram Boy," "Entertaining Mr. Sloane," "Sixteen Wounded" and "My Old Lady." Some of us just hadn't noticed.

4. Jeez. How long has she been around?

Made her Broadway debut as an understudy, then replacement, in "City of Angels" (1989).

5. What makes her so wonderful?

"I think she can make you believe anything," said Casey Nicholaw, her director in "To Be or Not to Be."

6. Maybe she doesn't have connections?

Her kid brother is the Obie Award-winning playwright Richard Maxwell. Her husband is Robert Emmet Lunney, actor and writer.

7. Has she made enemies?

She did quit the Roundabout production of "Entertaining Mr. Sloane" back in 2006 when her co-star Alec Baldwin was, reportedly, making her life miserable. She feared for her "physical safety, mental health and artistic integrity," she said at the time. ("Did Alec Baldwin Drive Co-Star Out?")

8. Does she at least have perspective?

"I feel very lucky to be an actress," she told The New York Times ("Frightener of Tots, Enemy of Mediocrity"). "I have no other talents whatsoever."

Gossip Girl of the Week: Barbara Cook

CURRENT GIG Back on Broadway at last, in her final week of previews of "Sondheim on Sondheim." Because how could you do that show without her?

AGE 82. (Impossible but true.)

BORN AND RAISED Atlanta, Ga.

ALMA MATER Girls' High in Atlanta. Then she was a typist for a while. Then she came to New York, thank God.

AVAILABILITY Divorced forever (since the 1960s) from David LeGrant, a comedian.

HOW LONG SHE'S BEEN AWAY FROM BROADWAY Almost 40 years, if benefit and tribute concerts don't count. Her last Broadway musical was "The Grass Harp," the 1971 Truman Capote flop. But that cabaret and concert thing has been going pretty well for her since then.

THE ROLE THAT MADE HER THE THEATER WORLD'S SWEETHEART Marian the Librarian in "The Music Man" (1957), for which she won a Tony. In Brooks Atkinson's review for The New York Times, he described her as "a beguiling actress in fresh and pleasant fashions."

SINGERS WHO INFLUENCED HER Mabel Mercer. Judy Garland.

PEAK MOMENT "Barbara Cook Sings Mostly Sondheim," Carnegie Hall, 2001.

WHY JUST STANDING THERE SINGING MAY BE BETTER THAN PLAYING A CHARACTER "There was such an incredible outpouring of love at almost every performance," she said in 1974, talking about her first cabaret dates. "People reached out to touch me. Not like the theater, where you're so removed from the audience."

"Sondheim on Sondheim," by Stephen Sondheim, directed by James Lapine, Studio 54, 254 West 54th Street, (212) 719-1300. Opening night: April 22, 2010.

Megan Doesn't Tell and Isn't Asked

MEGAN MULLALLY did "Live! With Regis and Kelly" this morning (left). She looked great in basic black. She talked about going to see "Saturday Night Live" in person. She talked about "Party Down," a Starz show she's on.

She even talked about Broadway theater: how much she loved "Promises, Promises," which she saw over the weekend. It stars one of her old "Will & Grace" co-stars, and she made a prediction: "Sean Hayes is gonna win a Tony, I'm telling you."

But did she talk about what all theater people really want to know? Her recent abrupt departure from the cast of "Lips Together, Teeth Apart," reportedly because she was unhappy with the performance of Patton Oswalt, the actor who was playing her brother? Which led to the Roundabout production being ditched, at least for now? Well, no.

And neither Regis Philbin nor Kelly Ripa, the show's hosts, brought up the subject. It's a fair assumption that that was agreed upon beforehand. Granted, "Live!" is not a hard-hitting news program. But another post-furor talk show appearance came to mind: when Hugh Grant, not long after his L.A.-hooker scandal, appeared on "The Tonight Show." Maybe the Philbin-Ripa team (and we love them both) should have borrowed the simple question Jay Leno asked his guest that night:

"What were you thinking?"

Gossip Guy of the Week: Levi Kreis

CURRENT GIG Stealing scenes, if not the whole show, as Jerry Lee Lewis in "Million Dollar Quartet," the jukebox musical about a day in 1956 when Lewis, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins had an impromptu jam session at Sun Records in Memphis.

AGE Mmmm, 35, maybe? He won't say officially, so that estimate is based on earlier interviews in which his age was given.

BORN AND RAISED Oliver Springs, Tenn.

ALMA MATER Belmont University (Nashville).

AVAILABILITY Attached.

BACK STORY Grew up in a very religious, conservative Southern family ("We thought the Southern Baptists were liberal," he told The Chicago Tribune.) Was sent to special programs to be "cured" of homosexuality. Dropped out, came out, moved to L.A., got a new life.

FAVORITE SONG IN THE SHOW "Peace in the Valley," a gospel number.

THE TIMES LOVED HIM (IN A RESTRAINED WAY) "Mr. Kreis's Lewis has a brash goofball charm," the critic Charles Isherwood wrote in Monday's paper. Isherwood liked Kreis's piano-playing too: "His thrashing keyboard style is an impressive approximation of Mr. Lewis's febrile dexterity."

NEW YORK MAGAZINE WAS SEDUCED Jerry Lee Lewis's "rapscallion randiness," Stephanie Zacharek declared, was "captured perfectly by Levi Kreis."

THE WASHINGTON POST NAILED IT "For his manic calorie-burn alone, the energetic Kreis makes the deepest impression," wrote Peter Marks. "It's the case of a showman playing a showman."

A PRETTY SHORT IMDB FILE He's done a little acting before. He played Matthew McConaughey's kid brother in "Frailty" (2001), a movie about demon killing, and he was in a tour of "Rent."

HE'S REALLY A MUSICIAN FIRST, BUT -- "I never considered acting," he told Windy City Times. "It absolutely just happened. . . . I'm grateful for that, because over time I've fallen very much in love with it."

"Million Dollar Quartet," by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux, directed by Eric Schaeffer, Nederlander Theater, 208 West 41st Street, (212) 307-4100, ticketmaster.com. Opening night: April 11, 2010.

Top 10 Odd Things That Have Happened (So Far) During the Spring Theater Season

TEETH GRITTED The "Lips Together, Teeth Apart" revival cast in happier days. From left: Patton Oswalt, Lili Taylor, Megan Mullally and David Wilson Barnes.


1. Megan Mullaly quit in a huff.
It's just the sort of thing Karen Walker, her high-entitlement "Will & Grace" character, might have done. Mullally, 51 , left the cast of the Broadway revival of Terrence McNally's "Lips Together, Teeth Apart" just two weeks or so before previews were scheduled to begin. Reports ("McNally Play Is Postponed") were that she was unhappy with the performance of a fellow cast member, Patton Oswalt, 41, who was playing her character's unsophisticated brother.

2. Sherie Rene Scott went Broadway overnight.

The whole "Lips Together, Teeth Apart" drama turned out to be good news for Scott, 41. Her play "Everyday Rapture," which was a big critical hit Off Broadway last spring ("Story of a Semi-Star"), will be the Roundabout Theater Company's substitute production, opening April 29. ("Roundabout Picks a Replacement.") It's about growing up "half-Mennonite," torn between Jesus and Judy Garland.

3. New York Times critics battled over "Come Fly Away."
Charles Isherwood, theater critic, raved about Twyla Tharp's dance tribute to Frank Sinatra in The Times. Alastair Macaulay, dance critic, wrote a follow-up review, strongly expressing the opposite opinion. When they debated the issue in print ("One Loves It. One Loathes It."), the telling detail turned out to be how each man had felt about "Mamma Mia!"

4. All kinds of critics went nuts over a 169-year-old play.

"London Assurance" originally opened in New York in 1841 at the Park Theater, back when Park Row seemed like a logical place for a theater. The current production in London, starring Simon Russell Beale, has critics here practically foaming at the mouth. Michael Riedel of The New York Post ("London's Victorian Secret") wrote that he hoped that a particular producer would be importing it to New York soon. "If he doesn't bring it over," Riedel added, "I will." Both Isherwood and Macaulay loved the show, too. All that theatergossip.com knows is that a lead character is named Lady Gay Spanker. Did that mean the same thing in 1841?

5. Patti LuPone named her memoir "Patti LuPone: A Memoir."

Which wouldn't be that odd, if LuPone, 60, hadn't held a big contest to have a fan choose the best title. This, apparently, was it. An admirer from Toronto came up with the winning name.

6. Denzel Washington did the theater world a huge favor.

We already knew that Washington, 55, was going to star in a revival of August Wilson's "Fences," opening on April 26. What we hadn't known before (and just learned after a recent Times Talk interview) is that he was offered the part as a movie role. But, God bless him, he said he'd like to do the play first.

7. Gay soldiers signed up.
Not long ago, seeing a play about gay people's lives on Broadway was a once-or-twice-in-a-decade experience. But "Next Fall" and "The Pride," it was announced, will be followed this fall by "Yanks!" It's a gay musical about soldiers in World War II. ("Angels in America" is returning too.)

8. Dame Edna and Michael Feinstein's show bit the dust.
How did two performers this great screw it up? The consensus: Just as we were getting into the mood with one of them (in "All About Me"), the other one interrupted. Come back again soon, guys, but maybe in separate productions.

9. Robin Wright signed on as Sally Talley.
Wright, who is no longer Robin Wright Penn and who turns 44 this week, announced that she'd star in a revival of Lanford Wilson's "Talley's Folly" in the 2010-11 season. Some women sign up for an HTML class after the divorce; others make their Broadway debut.

10. The new Kander and Ebb musical didn't immediately jump to Broadway.
It has to be hard mounting a show from a great musical-writing team when half the team has been dead for almost six years. But John Kander and Fred Ebb got started on "The Scottsboro Boys" many years ago (Ebb died in 2004). Who else but the guys who made hit musicals out of Nazis and decadence ("Cabaret") and publicity-hungry murderesses ("Chicago") could pull off a song-and-dance entertainment about a racist 1931 Alabama rape trial? Reviews were mixed, but surely this show will make a move soon. There are rumblings.

Lilith and Frasier, Together Again

THEIRS was a love for the ages. He, a fussy college professor, left at the altar by an overeducated barmaid. She, the ultimate buttoned-up -tight academic. But when Dr. Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) met Dr. Lilith Sternin (Bebe Neuwirth in frigid mode), bells rang and the '80s-into-'90s sitcom "Cheers" developed all kinds of new texture.
The characters' marriage ended. The series ended. Grammer went on to a successful spinoff. Neuwirth went back to Broadway to win a second Tony. Her character visited his character now and then on "Frasier." And that was that.

But theatergossip.com loves romance, loves a reunion, loves making something out of nothing. And sure enough, now that Grammer is on Broadway starring in "La Cage aux Folles" and Neuwirth is two blocks away, starring in "The Addams Family," and their musicals are opening roughly a week apart, it seemed the right time to honor our first interconnected Gossip Girl and Guy of the Week. (We also hear that they're announcing the Drama League award nominations together.)

Scroll on.

Gossip Girl of the Week: Bebe Neuwrith

CURRENT GIG "The Addams Family" (above, with Nathan Lane), bringing the creepy, kooky, altogether sexy Morticia Addams to dramatic and musical life.

AGE 51. Born Dec. 31, 1958.

BORN AND RAISED Princeton, N.J.

ALMA MATER Princeton High School. Juilliard.

AVAILABILITY Practically a newlywed. Married winemaker Chris Calkins in May 2009.

BEST KNOWN AS The remorseless murderess Velma Kelly ("Hello, suckers!") in "Chicago," if you're a New York theatergoer. The professionally repressed Dr. Lilith Sternin-Crane on seven seasons of NBC's "Cheers," if you're everybody else. Both, if you're very clever.

MOVIE YOU'VE FORGOTTEN SHE WAS IN "Bugsy" (1991), as a countess who flirts shamelessly with Warren Beatty.

BROADWAY DEBUT "A Chorus Line," as a replacement in the role of the veteran cynic Sheila ("May the adults smoke?"), when she was just 19.

HOW THAT CAN BE "I've always looked older than I am."


"The Addams Family," by Marshall Brickman, Rick Elice and Andrew Lippa, directed by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch, Lunt-Fontanne Theater, 205 West 46th Street, (877) 250-2929, ticketmaster.com . Opening night: April 8, 2010.

Gossip Guy of the Week: Kelsey Grammer

CURRENT GIG "La Cage aux Folles," playing Georges, the butch half of a gay couple who operate a drag club on the French Riviera. (He stars opposite Douglas Hodge, who stole the show in London.)

AGE 55. Born Feb. 21, 1955.

BORN AND RAISED The U.S. Virgin Islands (St. Thomas). After his parents' divorce, New Jersey and Florida.

AVAILABILITY Married, since 1997, to the former Camille Donatacci, soon to be one of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills," they say.

ALMA MATER Did some time at Juilliard.

BEST KNOWN AS Dr. Frasier Crane, pompous but lovable, sophisticated but hapless psychiatrist forced to rub elbows with blue-collar types at bars (on "Cheers") and in his own living room (on "Frasier"). With the two series combined, he played the same character on television for 20 years.

CHARACTER HE'S PLAYED ALMOST AS LONG Sideshow Bob, vengeful ex-con with big hair, on "The Simpsons" (1990-2009, so far).

HE'S DONE BROADWAY BEFORE Supporting roles in "Othello" and "Macbeth" in the early '80s. And there was his own "Macbeth" a few years ago, but why dwell on the past?

MOTTO (ACCORDING TO TWITTER) "Stagger onward, rejoicing."

RECENT TWEET ON "LA CAGE" "I am singing my butt off."


"La Cage aux Folles," by Harvey Fierstein, Jerry Herman and Jason Carr, based on the play by Jean Poiret, directed by Terry Johnson, Longacre Theater, 220 West 48th Street, telecharge.com. Opening night: April 18, 2010.