Nathan Lane, one of the most versatile Broadway and Hollywood actors, and star of numerous plays, musicals, TV shows, and animated and live-action movies, is back on the stage with “Pictures From Home,” his 25^th Broadway play.

Born in Jersey City, New Jersey on February 3, 1956, Lane has appeared in more than 35 films, garnering two nominations for Golden Globes as a leading actor in the musical/comedy category for The Birdcage (1997) and The Producers (2006). On TV, he is the most nominated – seven times – “guest actor” in Emmy history.

Lane has collected numerous awards, including three Tonys, an Olivier, three Emmys, and a Screen Actors Guild trophy. In 2006, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 2008, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. In 2010, The New York Times critic Charles Isherwood named him “the greatest stage entertainer of the decade.”

After a four-year hiatus from the stage, Lane is playing a former razor salesman Irving (Irv) Sultan, a role based on the father of the author of the book “Pictures From Home,” photographer Larry Sultan. The Broadway adaptation is a memory play written by Sharr White. It opened in previews in January 2023 at the legendary Studio 54 in New York City.

The play is directed by Bartlett Sher, who was recently announced as director of the Broadway adaptation of Damien Chazelle‘s 2016 Golden Globe-winning musical film La La Land.

In “Pictures From Home,” Lane is joined by Danny Burstein and Zoë Wanamaker who play his son Larry and wife Jean. The story is set in California from the 1980s through the 2000s. It is about an adult son who decides to interview and photograph his aging parents through the years, embarking on new discoveries of their past, present and possible future. While the son is looking for the meaning of his life, somehow trying to freeze time with his camera and tape recorder, the parents reluctantly start sharing their twisted wisdom with him. The actors frequently break “the fourth wall” and speak to the audience.

On February 21, California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul Pelosi attended the play and greeted the stars backstage.

We interviewed Lane through e-mail last week to talk about his role.

In “Pictures From Home,” you play the real father of photographer/author Larry Sultan. Did you research the real Sultan family? Did you take a different approach to this role as it’s based on a real story?

The main research was the book itself in which Larry writes a lot about his father and the interviews with Irv Sultan himself. I also listened to the actual tapes of Larry interviewing his parents, which for the most part were not terribly interesting. Ultimately, [playwright Sharr White] has created his own version of Irv Sultan in the piece and that is who I have to play. For example, he’s given him a dry sardonic sense of humor which I didn’t hear much evidence of in the tapes or in the book. And his flashes of anger were talked about by the family but not heard in any of the tapes.  Here and there, there were some things he said in the interviews that I asked to be included in the play, like having to change his name to John Sutton when he worked in an English clothing store because of anti-semitism.

This is a memory play, it’s not happening in real-time. It’s scenes from the last two years of Larry’s project when nerves were frayed and his parents wanted to move from the San Fernando Valley to Palm Desert, and after eight years just wanted this project to be over. It’s also highly theatrical in that the audience is directly addressed throughout the play by all the characters as they fight to tell their version of the family narrative. The play may be inspired by real events, but it is its own separate entity that has to be honored and those rules remain the same for any play.

This is your 25^th Broadway play. Were you waiting for something in particular for that milestone number? How did you choose this role?

I was sent the play and asked to do a reading of it a couple of years ago. I found it to be very moving with a lot of humor and thought it was a wonderful role. I also wanted to work with Bart Sher, one of my favorite directors. We did two readings of it over those two years and it eventually came to fruition. I wasn’t really thinking about milestones, I just loved the play. It all comes down to the writing in the end.

This play is about family and memories, both a drama and a comedy. Which differences do you see in it compared with your previous work?

Like a lot of the plays by the late great Terrence McNally, there is both drama and comedy in this play. One minute the audience is laughing at Irv trying to pretend he doesn’t have a limp, and the next they’re terribly moved by his genuine fear that he’s walking like an old man. Just like life, one minute you’re amused by it, and the next thing you know, something terrible happens and you’re devastated. It keeps you on your toes.

In this play, the actors “talk” to the audience in some scenes. In general, how much improvisation do you allow yourself onstage? And do you prefer plays or musicals?

I retired from musicals 13 years ago, it’s a young man’s game, so I prefer plays at this point, but I love it all. There is no improvisation in this play. Every word is beautifully written by our playwright Sharr White. When the writing is this good, there is no need to improvise. Improvisation can be an interesting tool in rehearsal if a director wants to employ it, and in some shows that has led to things that wind up in the production, but not in this case.

A “salesman father” is one of the most iconic roles in the history of American theater — Willy Loman from Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.” Do you see any connection between your current role and that one?

There really is no connection between Willy Loman and Irv Sultan other than that they were both salesmen. Irv Sultan was a self-made man, coming from poverty, moving to California, and working his way up the corporate ladder to become vice president of sales at Schick razor blades. The reason Schick let him go was simply because he refused to relocate to the Connecticut branch. It was his own perverse nature that led to that. I think he equated the east coast with failure and the west coast with success. He talks about this in one of the interviews and can’t explain it himself. Willy [Loman] never really had that kind of success except in his own mind. He’s refusing to let go of his fantasy of the American dream, a dream that has betrayed him and that leads to a nervous breakdown and suicide. Irv lived a long and prosperous life with his wife Jean who was a wildly successful real estate agent and who became the real breadwinner after he left Schick. If only Linda Loman had gone into real estate there might have been a happier ending for Willy…

You are one of the most versatile actors in Broadway/Hollywood. Are there any particular kinds of roles you are still looking to play?

Great well-written roles in great plays. Again, it’s always about the writing. I’m always looking for a challenge, for myself and for the audience. For me, this play was an unusual hybrid of family dramedy, documentary and three-way Ted Talk. It’s unique in that way and yet it has very universal and relatable themes. And the effect it seems to have on the audiences makes it all worth it for me.