Nathan Lane in high school
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On December 18, 2005, the Star Ledger ran a profile of Nathan Lane:
. . .
Joey Lane is a short, pudgy and insecure kid from Jersey City. He grew up
too fast in an unhappy family, went to strict Catholic schools, and only
found some brief escape from painful reality by going to the theater. Shy
and eager to please, hungry for approval and worried he will not get it,
he's prone to bad moods and lacerating self-criticism.
. . .
I attended Saint Peter's Prep during the same years as Joe Lane. Yes, Lane
lacked height and possesed girth, but, there was nothing insecure about him.
Every day, he held court in the cafeteria surrounded by adoring fans. In the
age of George Carlin, Joe Lane was the archetypical class clown. The entire
faculty feared his might.
Knowing now how much I'd have to shell out to see Nathan Lane on Broadway,
I'm sorry to say that I only went to one student play starring Joe Lane:
Flowers for Algernon. Lane played the young Charlie, the shadow of the past
haunting the doomed, artificial genius. Once during school hours, an English
teacher -- Mr. Casey -- had Lane and some other student stage an impromptu
performance of one act of Waiting for Godot. Even today (nearly three
decades later), I can still experience the pain of Lane's Estragon, "Beat
me? Certainly they beat me."
After watching the power and polish of Nathan Lane's craft in movies, I
still think that only his high school classmates ever really saw the full
measure of Lane's talent. Joe Lane would perform William Jenning Bryan's
Cross of Gold speech. The barn burner politician's oratory came to life. The
spell was so intense, we'd hold on to our desks, certain that a tornado must
follow the blast of words. William Jenning Bryan exited the stage, followed
by HL Mencken. Joe Lane read the cutting obituary from the Sage of
Baltimore. Shovel by shovel, Mencken -- with the help of Joe Lane -- buried
and damned the Monkey Trial Populist.
Was the outgoing joker that I met back in the '70s just a facade, a daily,
ongoing improvisation hiding, cushioning sorrow? Or, is the Charlie/Estragon
memory of the vulnerable Joe Lane the act?
- - -
Starting April 30, 2009, Nathan Lane will play Estragon in Wating for Godot
on Broadway.
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