'The Nance' Looking Likely as Nathan Lane's Return to Broadway It looks as if the 2012-13 Broadway season will include Nathan Lane in one play at least. Mr. Lane, a two-time Tony Award winner ("The Producers") with a golden touch at the box office, said in an interview on Monday that he plans to star on Broadway next spring in a Lincoln Center Theater production of "The Nance," a new play about early 20th-century burlesque, written by Douglas Carter Beane ("The Little Dog Laughed"). A spokesman for Lincoln Center Theater confirmed that executives hope to mount "The Nance" at a Broadway house in spring 2013, with the Tony winner Jack O'Brien set to direct. There has also been buzz recently that Mr. Lane would return to Broadway this fall in "The Iceman Cometh" as part of a transfer of the critically praised production at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, where Mr. Lane played the lead role of the salesman Theodore Hickman. But Mr. Lane said "Iceman" is not bound for Broadway at the moment because of a variety of commercial and producing challenges. "Iceman," which also starred Brian Dennehy, another Tony winner, ran nearly five hours, and there was only time (and stamina) to hold six performances a week in Chicago, making it a hard slog to profitability on Broadway. The production closed last week. Any producer who wanted "Iceman" would have to strike a deal with Scott Rudin, the powerful theater producer and tough bargainer, who has the rights to mount the play on Broadway but is not transferring this production himself. "The financial numbers just haven't been feasible, and if we had to do seven performances a week for several months to turn a profit, Dennehy and I would be dead," said Mr. Lane, who noted that the Broadway producers Jeffrey Richards, David Richenthal and Jordan Roth were among those who have eyed a transfer. And it's O'Neill, you can't edit out major speeches or characters. So it has just not made sense economically. "There has been some interest from BAM" - the Brooklyn Academy of Music - "and other nonprofit theaters about perhaps doing it at a later date, but we'll see," Mr. Lane added. It's kind of bittersweet. It's been the best experience of my life. A spokeswoman for the Goodman said on Monday night that she had no information about a future life for their "Iceman" production in New York. As for "The Nance," Mr. Lane has been attached to the play for a few years and did a reading of an early draft in 2010 in Mr. Beane's living room with Benjamin Walker ("Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson") and Kevin Chamberlin (Mr. Lane's co-star in "The Addams Family"). The play centers on a performer who played a "nance" in burlesque shows in the 1920s and "30s; nance, or nancy boy, is slang for an effeminate or homosexual man, and nances were popular theatrical figures, akin to blackface performers during that era. "I think it's the best thing that Doug has ever written, a rather risky and theatrical piece that I think has something to say," Mr. Lane said. It has funny scenes, yes, and the burlesque sketches are a riot, but there is no happy ending - it's pretty tragic, in fact, but most of all it's a beautiful piece.