Musical man

Jason Simon ends his run inThe Producers

April 8, 2008 4:44:46 PM

ATHE SHOW MUST GO ON: Simon [left] with Austin Owen as Leo Bloom.

When holographic projection technology gets perfected, you can be sure that Mel Brooks’s The Producers will be one of the first holograms released. There was the film in 1968, starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder; the golden-ticket Broadway musical in 2001, with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick; then the 2005 film with the pair reprising their roles as maniacal musical producer Max Bialystock and meekly reluctant conspirator Leo Bloom. Apparently, people who like to laugh can’t get enough of the zany story.

The musical is coming to Providence Performing Arts Center April 11-13, and one of its actors is as pleased about that as any of the show’s fans. That’s not because his final performance will be here, in a tour that has lasted 13 months, but because he was so delighted to get to play the part in the first place.

When theater veteran Jason Simon saw Nathan Lane cavort as Bialystock on Broadway, he was stunned.

“I remember turning to a friend and saying, ‘I need to play that role,’ ” he says, speaking on the phone from Boston, where he was visiting family.

Simon has gathered more than 40 regional credits over the past 14 years, because of his girth and occasionally flamboyant performance style. But that factor was only incidental in Simon wanting to play the character.

“There is so much to Max, so many different aspects,” he says. “He’s probably the wildest combination of sleaze factor and good guy that you could possibly imagine. Now, here’s a guy who is going around and trying to sleep with little old ladies to get money, but he’s using that money to produce the art, he still goes back to his main love, which is the theater. There are a lot of things in there I can identify with and a lot of things that I’ve never played before, so it’s a whole lot of fun.

“When the audition came up for this, I had phone calls from friends saying that they were going to shoot me if I didn’t audition for it,” he adds.

Looking back from the end of the year-long run, he thinks that he’s done a good job of being honest to the character.

“I usually say I feel like I do a nice job taking a little bit of Nathan, a little bit of Zero Mostel, a little bit of Jackie Gleason and even Burt Lahr and throw it in the blender that’s me and pour it out there on the stage,” he explains.

Simon’s roles have ranged from as
serious as King Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar to performing in drag playing Mary Sunshine in Chicago. Does he have a favorite character?

“Oh, I don’t know,” he says. “That’s a tough one. Among straight plays I would have to say Lenny in Of Mice and Men. And among musical theater, Max Bialystock is a dream come true. But I thoroughly love so many roles that I’ve played. The Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz is one of my all time favorites.”

This is the longest tour of the nine that he has done over his career, which have taken him to every state from Atlantic to Pacific and every province in Canada. He’s “sort of” based in New York, where the auditions are, as well as Boston and also Princeton, Illinois, where he has a theater company. Although he’s not married, doesn’t being on the road most of the time sound like the purgatory that Army brats go to if they’re bad?

“No, actually, I’m one of those people where I’m happiest when I’m working — if you can even call what I do work,” he says. “I look at the fact that I get to run around the country, see different parts of the country, see different parts of the world, go out and entertain people, be on stage, make people laugh.

“Then on top of it, someone’s willing to pay me to do that,” Simon adds. “So I’m like, ‘OK, twist my arm, I’ll go, I’ll go.’”