The Martin chronicles

New York â€”  LIKE an impish personification of the vintage Carly Simon ballad, Martin Short really, really doesn’t have time for the pain.

But a deadline is looming, the lights of Broadway are beckoning, and he’s gotta find some pain somewhere.

It’s a search that has brought the actor-comedian to his knees in a Manhattan building in mid-April, withering in the lap of a consoling woman. “They don’t like me!� he laments, referring to an audience that isn’t there. “This is the new Broadway! At these prices, they want me to show my personal pain! But my truth is boring. My truth sucks.�

Short, however, is not finding any sympathy from his designated comforter, actress Mary Birdsong. Or from the dozen others gathered in the room, who respond with admiring giggles.

They are his creative conspirators, helping him realize his Broadway-bound project, “Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me,� an original musical that brings Short’s often offbeat comic stylings into a twisted take on the trend of soul-baring, one-person shows.

The musical opens May 9 at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre, then stops in Toronto and Chicago before bowing on Broadway at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on Aug. 10.

The Canadian-born veteran of film and television is no stranger to the stage. Short won a best actor Tony in 1999 for his turn in the revival of the Cy Coleman-Neil Simon musical “Little Me.� This time, he’s returning to the Great White Way armed with not only additional theatrical mileage (he appeared in stage versions of “The Goodbye Girl� and “The Producers�) but with major-league backing: Tony winners Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, professionally reuniting for the first time since creating the smash stage version of “Hairspray.�

Now that Short has decided he’s ready to put his life story under the klieg lights, he has a slight problem: There’s no scandal. No angst. No calamity followed by a shining, flying leap from the abyss. In fact, he’s been happily married for almost 30 years. He has three untroubled children. He’s rich.

But the show must go on. And because Short doesn’t want to come up short, he arrives at the perfect solution -- he’ll just make up stuff.

With its tuneful renditions of addictions, divorces, rehab, nervous breakdowns and professional catastrophes, the show could be subtitled “The “E! Not Very True Hollywood Story,� complete with hoofers. The musical gives a wink at and an affectionately pointed nudge in the ribs of the genre of confessional solo shows like “Elaine Stritch: At Liberty� and Billy Crystal’s “700 Sundays.� Oh, and this “one-man show� has a cast of supporting performers, playing several characters who help Short bring his faux life to life.

“This show is a result of all the ‘Access Hollywood’ and all these things that just get in deep into the lives of people,� says Short, relaxing with a club sandwich during a brief rehearsal break. “Isn’t it enough to be a clown? How much personal information do we really need to know? Can’t the entertainment be enough?�

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Funny business

JUST a few weeks before the San Francisco opening, Short, who resides in Los Angeles, and company are hunkered down in an old rehearsal hall, meticulously attending to lines and dance steps. Like a thinner version of Laker Coach Phil Jackson managing the game from the sidelines, director Wittman, who co-wrote the lyrics with composer Shaiman, stalks the performers around the room, standing almost on top of them, adjusting moves, manipulating expressions, perpetually in retreat-and-approach mode.

Despite this attention to detail, the atmosphere is decidedly loose. In this room, Short is called “Marty� -- never Martin, and the familiarity is infectious. Joking around with his costars, he kids that actress Nicole Parker stuck her tongue down his throat during a brief kissing scene. The next minute, he launches into impromptu song. Later, he plops his arm affectionately around the accompanists. When Broadway vet Gary Beach (“The Producers�) and environmentalist Laurie David, wife of “Curb Your Enthusiasm’s� Larry David, drop in for a visit, his face lights up.

Still, there’s work to be done. Several new songs and elaborate production numbers need to be finessed. And there’s no final script yet. Co-bookwriter Daniel Goldfarb flips through more than two dozen pages that have just been written the day before.

The stocky Shaiman, who has worked on more than 50 films and boasts in his stage biography that he has lost each of the five times he’s been nominated for an Oscar, pauses to ponder the increasing pressure of putting together a show with a tight deadline and high scrutiny of its A-list pedigree.

“As a large Jew,� he says with a deadpan grin, “those pressures will just have to get into line behind everything else.�

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Behind the masks -- almost

AFTER more than 30 years of performing -- much of it behind the makeup of such bizarre comic characters as the roly-poly entertainment reporter Jiminy Glick -- Short finds it liberating to play a version of himself, even if the onstage Marty Short has no real resemblance to the offstage Martin Short.

“This is coming at a fine time in my career,� he says. “It’s total fun. It wouldn’t be worth doing if it wasn’t fun. I’m not doing it to pay the rent.�

These days, the diminutive Short looks and moves nothing like a man pushing 60. Save for a few faint lines around his eyes and some nearly invisible gray flecks in his full head of hair, he looks remarkably as he did during his “SCTV� days. Light on his feet, he easily handles the choreographic challenges of the show.

The unspoken irony of “Fame Becomes Me� is that Short really does have a cavalcade of life -- and death -- experiences that would provide plenty of fodder for the stage. His older brother was killed in a car crash when Short was only 12, and both his parents died before he was 21. In 1994, his close friend John Candy died of a heart attack.

But Short has no plans to draw on his past as a vehicle for future projects.

“My approach to all that is part and parcel of the Canadian people,� he says. “Yes, those things have happened to me, but they’ve happened to everyone. It’s just not a comfortable area for me, and I’m just not focused on that. The fact is, I don’t have demons. I have nothing to unearth.�

Actually, there’s a wealth of personal material to be mined in his varied comedic career, which first came to prominence in 1982 when he joined “SCTV Network 90� along with such established players as Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara and Andrea Martin. After he and the writing staff of that show won an Emmy Award, Short went on to “Saturday Night Live,� where he developed the clenched-jaw nerd Ed Grimley, legendary songwriter Irving Cohen and nervous attorney Nathan Thurm.

Myriad TV series and films have been greeted with varying degrees of critical and popular acclaim. There’s the extreme highs (“SCTV,� “SNL,� numerous Emmy nominations), the not-so high (a short-lived NBC sitcom and the films “Captain Ron� and “Cross My Heart�), and the in-betweens (scene-stealing turns in two “Father of the Bride� films).

“Bride� costar Steve Martin remembers when he first met Short more than two decades ago on the set of “Three Amigos.� “He was funny immediately -- there was no warm-up time,� Martin says. “He is really unafraid.�

And certainly not afraid to take career risks. Last year, Short showed his dramatic chops, playing a serial rapist-murderer on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.� The series’ executive producer Neal Baer calls Short a natural at drama, “a consummate professional who was fun to work with.�

But now he’s more in his element with “Fame Becomes Me.�

The germ of the musical was planted more than 30 years ago when Short and his wife, Nancy, hosted Christmas dinners followed by performances by Short and the guests. The popular post-dinner shows soon became the main event of the evening. Eventually, Billy Crystal’s wife, Janice, suggested that Short do a version of the party as a stage piece.

He only recently found the time to start seriously working on the musical. And it wasn’t until late last year, after a successful workshop presentation in front of an audience, that the creators felt they were on to something.

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Coming together

THE noisy buzz inside San Francisco’s Curran Theatre sounds like part construction site, part high school reunion. It’s been a few weeks since the final rehearsals in New York, and “Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me� is being mounted on stage. Workers adjust huge sky-blue backdrops decorated with shields bearing the initials “M.S.� Inside the auditorium, cast and crew members hug and kiss as if they hadn’t seen one another in ages. Parker presents fellow cast member Birdsong with a red birthday bouquet.

Suddenly, Short, dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans, appears at the rear of the theater and strides to the front, beaming. It’s the first time he’s seen the set. “Hey, it looks great,� he proclaims. “Are we excited now?�

Welcoming cries of “Marty!� greet him.

Just a few hours earlier, even before seeing the set, Short is the picture of calm. “Everything is going very, very smooth,� he said as he traveled across town in a private van between radio and TV interviews. Even traffic prompted by the city’s 100th anniversary commemoration of the 1906 earthquake can’t puncture his pleasant mood.

“Everyone is on the same page,� he added. “Of course I don’t have a history of doing things that don’t go smoothly.

“Going in, everyone knows the ground rules. One thing you can control is the journey. You have to approach things with calm and logic. At age 56, to be grouchy is not terribly becoming. I can control my state of happiness by how I respond to things around me.�

For Wittman, the process has been a creative breeze.

“Marty and I have been friends for a very long time,� says the director, who has worked with a who’s who of performers, including Kristin Chenoweth, Dame Edna, Nathan Lane, Patti LuPone, Bette Midler and Elaine Stritch. “He’s totally unspoiled. And my role is to make him look as good as he can.�

Adds Brooks Ashmanskas, another longtime friend of Short’s, who plays several supporting characters in the musical: “I really believe he loves the stage, and he’s right where he belongs.�

Life for Short after “Fame Becomes Me� is cloudy at the moment -- he’s too focused on the task at hand. But he’s hinted at hanging it all up. Out of the spotlight, he enjoys quiet moments -- having dinner with friends or watching the Three Stooges under a blanket with his teen son.

He says he doesn’t look back much at his work: “I would only look at the things I wish I would have done better,� he says. The sole project he spotlights in his career is a 1995 TV special “The Show Formerly Known as the Martin Short Show.� “That’s one where I can say, yes, that one is all right.

“I could retire in a second. I don’t know. I want my exit to be as cool as my entrance. I kind of feel that when you do what I do, you make a deal with the audience. Do they really need to see you wheeled out on a stretcher? But I do know this -- I love performing.�

And if “Fame Becomes Me� doesn’t connect with critics or audiences, Short maintains he will not be shattered. Even in failed projects, he says, he finds silver linings. For example, there’s the film “Clifford,� in which he played a 10-year-old who wreaks havoc on his guardians, played by Charles Grodin and Mary Steenburgen.

“More people come up to me and talk about ‘Clifford’ than anything else I’ve ever done,� Short says. “It’s one of the most bizarrely original movies I’ve ever made.�

Leaning forward, he adds, “I’m just drawn to the inventiveness of comedy. It’s all about the risk and not being afraid. And if you’re not willing for whatever reason to take the risk, what’s the point?�