There’s also a potential disadvantage, however, as John Treacy Egan has learned through his lengthy association with the hit Broadway musical “The Producers.”
Egan, currently seen as the Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind, played the cross-dressing director Roger DeBris for many months, and, if that weren’t enough, understudied the lead, Max Bialystock, for a time, and often did the role when the star was incapacitated or on vacation.
He learned the potential downside of such broad participation in a show as fast-paced and possessing as many featured roles as is the case with Mel Brooks’s smash hit.
“Sometimes, I sort of momentarily forget which part I’m playing, and when a number starts, I join in until I suddenly remember and tell myself: ‘Hey, Max doesn’t know that song,’ ” admitted the affable, easygoing Egan during a recent between-shows dinner.
The 41-year-old actor, who’s still standing by for both Bialystock and DeBris, expects to remain with the show for the foreseeable future, although when the news that Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick were returning to their old roles for a 14-week period, there was a climate of fear in the overall company, members of which wondered just how secure their jobs were.
“I was hired as part of the ensemble for the national tour, and to understudy Max Bialystock and Franz Liebkind, and then, when Brad Oscar took over the role of Max, they hired me, for three months, before we went out on the road, to cover Bialystock and Liebkind in New York,” he recalled. “Because Oscar had been the original Liebkind, they had to find a new one. They were auditioning people, and I was in the building learning the two roles because I had to be ready when we went out on tour.”
Egan was, as they say, in the right place at the right time. “They taught me Franz pretty quickly,” he said. “And they put me on, and, by the weekend, when I had, I think, two shows under my belt, they told me I could stay on and play Franz and understudy Max Bialystock and Roger DeBris. It was kind of a formality, and they told me I’d never go on as Roger, because Gary Beach, whose role it was, never missed a performance.”
As things worked out, Egan ended up in the part. “When Gary was about to leave for the Los Angeles company, they were auditioning again, and I was doing understudy rehearsals,” Egan said. “The stage manager said, ‘You know, he’s pretty good, so let’s have Mel Brooks and Susan Stroman take a look at him.’ “
That’s how the beefy Egan ended up wearing a ball gown and a tiara eight times a week, a costume that the character said, with some justification, makes him look a bit like the Chrysler building.
“They offered me the role of DeBris for 5 months and, at the same time, I was going on as Max fairly regularly, maybe twice a week, because Lewis J. Stadlen, whose role I was by then, had a hip injury and was out of the show a lot of the time,” Egan said.
Needless to say, the more crucial roles in “The Producers” are covered by more than one understudy, so when Egan was playing Max, another cast member got a chance to be Roger.
“That went on for about a year, and it was really amazing. I’ve gotten the opportunity to play these three principals in this show,” he said.
Egan estimates that he’s played Max Bialystock between 60 and 70 times thus far. He came to “The Producers” in May 2002, and his first time on as Max was in October of the same year. He played Franz for a year, and then did those five months as Roger.
“I’ve just gone back to Franz, after doing it with a whole bunch of actors playing Max. I never went on as Roger as an understudy, until I took over the role. That was my first time on,” he said. Obviously, Egan is the theatrical equivalent of what team managers in sport mean when they refer to as a “utility man,” meaning an athlete who can play more than one position and do it well.
Which is not to say that the actor doesn’t have a favorite role in the show.
“I think you have to work from the top down,” he said. “I love playing Max because it’s such a high-energy role, and then Roger and then, finally Franz, probably, because of how busy I am in those roles. I like to be busy. If you’re sitting around backstage a lot of the time, you tend to lose your energy, and you’ve got to have your energy up to go out and do it. when you’re on for Max, you’re just on the whole time.”
Franz Liebkind, his own role, is less demanding. “It’s in little spurts,” Egan said. “You’re on, and then you’re backstage reading. Then you’re on again and then you’re backstage watching the news.”
Clearly, John Treacy Egan enjoys working. He was finishing his tenure in his previous show when the call from “The Producers” came.
“I was finishing on a Saturday night, and I was expecting to be free for about three months,” he said. “The following Thursday, I got a call asking ‘Can you start tonight?’ “
That’s not as bizarre as it may sound, since, after all, Egan had been rehearsing for the road tour when British star Henry Goodman, who had been hired to replace Nathan Lane on Broadway, was unceremoniously fired after a Sunday matinee performance. Brad Oscar took over as Max and a new Franz had to be found. Egan, already a member of the team, at least marginally, turned out to be the solution to the company’s problem.
Egan is a native of Larchmont, N.Y., where he still lives, as do several members of his large family. “I’m the youngest of a family of seven kids,” he said. “I went to Saints John and Paul in Larchmont, and then Rye Country Day School, and finally SUNY Purchase, so I’ve always been a local guy. When work has taken me to Europe, or had me on the road, Westchester has always been the home I came back to. I’ve always liked the feeling of a small town.”
So, like many another Broadway performer, Egan breaks from the St. James Theater on West 44th Street and makes the dash to Grand Central to catch the commuter train that takes him home.
But he’s used to it. Before “The Producers,” there had been “Jekyll and Hyde” on Broadway, and at least two off-Broadway shows, “When Pigs Fly” and “Bat Boy,” to help him become accustomed to the schedule he now follows routinely.
Touring companies of “Cats” and “Kiss Me, Kate” took him out of town and away from his beloved Westchester County, but he always returned to the area where most of his siblings still live and where he feels most comfortable.
“I like walking into the town of Larchmont, and knowing people I see on the streets,” he said.
When he was an undergraduate at SUNY Purchase, Egan was a voice major with a half-formed idea of becoming an opera singer, which is a long jump from singing “In Old Bavaria” and “Der Guten Tag Hop Clog” in “The Producers.”
“I still study classical music with my voice teacher, even though I don’t get to use it at all in this show. Nothing I do requires much singing. It’s really more like talk-singing, a kind of character singing,” he said.
A strong tenor, more precisely a heldentenor, Egan might normally find himself in line for any number of great parts in the operas of Richard Wagner. “So I’ll have something to do after ‘The Producers,’ ” he said, joking.
The actor’s attitude toward opera involves the demands it places on the performer’s voice. “If you’re not in good voice, you just don’t work. In the theater, you really don’t have to sing all that much,” he said.
There’s one aspect of working in “The Producers” that runs counter to Egan’s extremely gregarious nature, at least when he’s playing Franz Liebkind.
“Both Max and Roger are part of a two-man team,” he said. “Max works with Leo Bloom, the accountant, all the time, and Roger has his partner, Carmen Ghia. Franz is more or less on his own with all of those pigeon puppets,” he added, referring to the birds the Nazi playwright keeps on the roof of his building, and which provide one of the show’s great sight gags.
“Franz is pretty much all by himself and it can be a little lonely,” Egan said. “When you’re playing Roger, you’ve got Carmen, and when you’re Max, there’s Leo, but as Franz, you can virtually sneak in and out of the building almost without talking to anybody. I’m a kind of a social person, so I like to be a part of a group. It’s a lot more fun when you’re bouncing off another actor the whole evening, even when you’re backstage. Franz Liebkind is a little bit of a lonely character.”
The audience, of course, seeing a raucous musical such as “The Producers” might never suspect that there’s a kind of loneliness backstage, but John Treacy Egan is there to testify that it’s possible.