THEATER REVIEW
THE NANCE
Lyceum Theatre, 149 W. 45th St.; 212-239-6200. Running time: 150 minutes, one intermission.
If your public personality is the same as your personal one, you can safely be yourself, right?
Not so for Nathan Lane's character in Broadway's "The Nance."
His Chauncey Miles, a burlesque performer in 1937 New York, is famous for playing a "nance" — a fey, mincing stereotype of an effeminate gay man. Problem is, Chauncey really is gay. And that's not easy at a time when two men chatting in a public place could be arrested for "degenerate disorderly conduct" or "the old standby — loitering."
So Chauncey is cautious when flirting with young, guileless hunk Ned (Jonny Orsini) at the Automat. It's not long before a one-night stand turns into a love affair, and the upstate bumpkin settles in Chauncey's basement pad before joining him in the revue.
Joan Marcus
Lewis Stadlen (from left), Cady Huffman, Nathan Lane and Jonny Orsini mug it up in "The Nance," set in the world of '30s burlesque.
Drawing from his experience with both plays ("The Little Dog Laughed") and books for musicals ("Sister Act," "Cinderella"), Douglas Carter Beane weaves together the characters' lives and their numbers, inspired by real ones, at the Irving Place Theatre.
There, Chauncey is paired with Efram (Lewis J. Stadlen), with whom he trades rimshot punch lines and risqué double entendres. "I like to play with the organ," Chauncey says, about hymns. "I love love love when the organ swells."
With his hunger to entertain and his precision timing, Lane reminds us why he's a vaudevillian master in those scenes. He could ham it up even more, though, as he did so flamboyantly in the film "The Birdcage."
There's also little sense of titillating sleaze in Jack O'Brien's staging, which is saying something considering the comic routines are interspersed with hootchy-kootchy bump and grind, backed by a five-piece band.
Card-carrying Communist Sylvie (Cady Huffman, the curvacious Ulla of "The Producers"), Latin from Manhattan Carmen (Andréa Burns, "In the Heights") and blond bombshell Joan (Jenni Barber) shake their va-va-vooms with gusto, but it all feels a little too clean-cut.
This fuzzy feeling is echoed backstage, where everybody miraculously gets along. The staunchly Republican Chauncey is pals with Red Sylvie, while Efram huffs, "I don't think the pansies should be applauded, but I don't think they gotta get punished."
The crew closes ranks when the La Guardia administration launches a crusade against burlesque joints. Ned, Chauncey's young paramour, will be OK: He's comfortable with his sexuality and even lands a gig in a legit show. But Chauncey belongs to the past, riven by self-loathing and mourning the death of burlesque.
By the end, he's all out of quips, with nowhere left to hide. It's curtains for a man and a whole chunk of New York history.
elisabeth.vincentelli@nypost.com
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