AP News, February 12th, 2007
Max Bialystock, the spark plug that drives "The Producers," is a New Yorker first _ and then he's Jewish, according to Mel Brooks, the man who created the rapscallion who uses money from little old ladies to finance what he thinks will be a flop Broadway musical.
So why shouldn't Brooklyn-born-and-bred Tony Danza, now a budding song-and-dance man, step into Bialystock's shoes in the long-running Broadway musical?
"I am a New Yorker. It's just that I have been living in LA for 28 years," the performer says, talking with an outer-borough accent that suggests the man never really left his Italian roots behind. "I am kind of finding my way back."
The trim Danza, dressed stylishly in black, sits in an Upper West Side restaurant across from his Manhattan apartment and chows down on a frittata between sips of a Bloody Mary. His manner is direct yet friendly as he talks about his evolution _ from sitcom star on "Taxi" and "Who's the Boss" to club performer to talk-show host to Broadway headliner (with his caricature now on the wall at Sardi's).
"There is only one way to stay around in this business _ unless you're George Clooney or some big shot," the actor says. "If you don't hit that kind of big fame, the only way to stay relevant is to diversify. I hate to use Madonna's term of reinvention but, in a way, that's it. Otherwise, you are yesterday's TV star. There is always going to be somebody younger, somebody better, somebody cheaper."
And appearing in a role almost copyrighted by Nathan Lane, the original star of "The Producers," certainly is a challenge, even though Danza has been on Broadway before. He made his debut in the Roundabout Theatre Company production of Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge" in 1998 and the following year was in the acclaimed Kevin Spacey revival of Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh."
But "The Producers" is a different, more complicated kind of theatrical beast, and he's right in the middle of its big, splashy exuberance.
As Brooks tells it, Danza came in to meet with him and director Susan Stroman and sang Bialystock's first song in the show, "The King of Broadway."
"He was great," the master says. Instant hire. "The only advice I gave him was, `Don't be careful. Don't be tentative,'" Brooks adds.
Danza plunged right in.
"It's a leap of faith every time you walk out on stage," Danza says. "You have to be focused. There's where listening comes in. You have to hear everything as if it were for the first time.
"I don't get stage fright. What I get is execution anxiety. What I mean is that you are always worried that you won't execute (the role) properly _ especially when you don't own it when you first start. It doesn't come together in your mind until you've done it a number of times."
Danza started in mid-December in "The Producers," guided by Stroman, a veteran Broadway director and/or choreographer of such shows as "Crazy for You" and "Contact."
"She's a smart, concise director and knows exactly what she wants," Danza says. "And I'll be honest with you _ I'm the first to be contrary with a director. But everything she told me to do was right on the money."
In the last six years, Stroman has been through a lot of Bialystocks, putting them on stage in New York, on the road and around the world. "It's one of the hardest roles on Broadway _ you have to have a fearless quality and Tony certainly does," she says. "There are a lot of TV and movie stars who don't have the athleticism that it takes to get through eight shows a week. Tony really does sing and he really does dance. And he's in great shape."
"So much of stage acting is physical movement and I can move," says the 55-year-old Danza. He was an amateur boxer in his youth, and today the man still moves with the steady confidence of someone who knows his way around a ring. And all his years filming his TV series in front of live audiences helped, too.
"In a sitcom, you nail down your character, and you just do it every week," Danza says. "You get a new script _ 50 pages in a week. It's like a short play. I learned a long time ago that you've got to learn things in chunks and then you put it together."
After his gig in "The Producers" ends next month, Danza goes out on the road again with his band. In his club act, there's a little bit of everything _ from standards to pop to do-wop to a bit of rap. "But I still think you've got to be able to hum a song," he says. "You want a melody there.
There were skeptics, including his agent who said, "What if it says on the front page of Variety, 'Tony Danza can't sing,'" the performer says. "People want to keep you in your slot. The fact that I went out there and did it _ and was successful _ changed my life."
The cancellation of his talk show hurt, and Danza doesn't mask his disappointment. Yet the audience reception at the St. James Theatre _ where "The Producers" is playing _ has been a smoothing balm.
"The thing you learn when you are sort of a celebrity is that they will let you come on the stage," he says. "They will welcome you broadly but then you have to deliver."
And he is delivering.
"The reason I can go back to the show all the time is that it makes the audience laugh," Stroman says. "I can sit in the back of the house and enjoy the spontaneity of the laughter from the audience.
"What makes me even happier is that the cast adores Tony. So there's a brightness backstage. Tony is very gracious and willing to learn. He seems to thrive on it. He and the show met each other at the right time."
