Matthew Broderick prepares in his dressing room at the Imperial Theater, where he stars in "Nice Work if You Can Get It," opening on April 24. More Photos »
By CHARLES McGRATH
Published: April 5, 2012
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Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
The Broadway life of Matthew Broderick: as the in-demand Jimmy Winter in the coming "Nice Work if You Can Get It." More Photos »
In musical theater, though, nothing is as easy as it looks. Mr. Broderick had back surgery just last summer and had been working out almost daily with both a trainer and a physical therapist to get ready for this job, which also requires him to deliver Gershwin standards like " 'S Wonderful." During breaks, when he wasn't catching his breath on a prop sofa, he was off by himself in a corner of the stage, squinting with concentration and dancing with invisible partners to silent accompaniment. "That's it," Kathleen Marshall, the show's director and choreographer, called out to him at one point. "Turn, turn, turn —and land! "
A few days later in his dressing room Mr. Broderick acknowledged "sweating like a maniac after about 15 minutes," and recalled a similar stage during rehearsals for "The Producers," the smash hit in which he starred with Nathan Lane. "Nathan and I both got horribly tired," he said, "and we lost all kinds of weight, so we went to Prada and bought some nice clothes for our new, thin bodies. But gradually, as the run goes on, your body figures out how not to work so hard, and your Prada clothes go back to the other side of the closet."
Mr. Broderick is married to Sarah Jessica Parker, who according to Forbes, made $30 million last year, and was himself paid $100,000 a week for a return engagement in "The Producers." Presumably he doesn't need to work this hard, and in many ways he is an unlikely musical-comedy star. He is not classically trained as either a singer or a dancer, and at least part of his appeal onstage stems from the kind of eternally boyish charm that caused a teenager, spotting him one day outside the theater, to nudge his companion and say: "Dude! Ferris Bueller!"
Though "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," the beloved John Hughes comedy, came out in 1986, or half a lifetime ago for Mr. Broderick, he may be forever identified with his role in that film: a cheerful, innocent-seeming slacker who makes everything look easy. He acknowledged as much by appearing this year in a Super Bowl commercial that gently parodied the movie. "I spent a long time trying to move on from that," he said of the Ferris role. "Only because it was so successful. I'm not complaining. But then I figured since everybody thinks of me that way anyway, maybe it would be nice to be in on it. Why wouldn't Ferris Bueller have become middle aged?"
Maintaining a Ferris-like image is part of the challenge of Mr. Broderick's new job. "Nice Work," which is capitalized at $10 million and which several years back was slated to star Harry Connick Jr., is a hybrid show. It has a brand-new book by Joe DiPietro, a Tony winner for "Memphis," but incorporates just about every Gershwin song you can thing of and some you probably haven't. Mr. Broderick plays Jimmy Winter, a much-wedded, frequently sozzled Prohibition-era New York playboy who falls in love with a female bootlegger, played by Kelli O'Hara. The part calls for someone who can seem as if he has never worked hard at anything in his life, and can also hold his own in song-and-dance numbers with an ensemble that is exceptionally lithe and energetic.
Ms. Marshall, a multiple Tony winner, was able to handpick the cast of "Nice Work," and just about everyone she hired, including Ms. O'Hara, Michael McGrath (Ms. O'Hara's bootlegging sidekick), Judy Kaye (a crusading temperance worker) and Stanley Wayne Mathis (the local police chief), is someone she had worked with before. She wanted Mr. Broderick (whom she choreographed in the 2003 televised version of "The Music Man" ) because he has "such style," she said.
"That's the hardest thing to teach, and he comes by it naturally," she said. "I think it's because he's such an old-movie buff." She added: "A comedy like this requires a light touch, and Matthew has a light touch in everything he does: his singing, his dancing. He has a beautiful voice with such ease to it, no sense of production. He reminds me a little of Fred Astaire, and it's probably no coincidence that Fred Astaire originally introduced a lot of these Gershwin songs."
A few weeks earlier, during an Act I run-through at a rehearsal hall near Union Square, Mr. Broderick did not seem particularly Astaire-like. He was wearing tracksuit pants and a shapeless striped T-shirt, and when he put on his Jimmy Winter tailcoat and top hat, he looked for a moment like someone who had wandered in from a rehearsal of "Waiting for Godot." As the act went on, he seemed to be simultaneously coasting and working much harder than everyone else. He wasn't even pretending to have a good time; instead he was looking at his feet a lot, and at the end of one long and complicated bit of choreography that had him dancing on chairs and up and over a table he was puffing a little.
"The hardest thing for me is remembering the steps," he said later, "and when they get changed, my brain goes crazy." He added: "I know I'm irritating sometimes to people. I tend to take my time, and I don't like to do too much without an audience. I think it's slightly embarrassing to act full out at 890 Broadway with people looking at you from folding chairs." He smiled. "It shouldn't really be done."
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