Kattan Hops out of "Frogs"

Tue., Jul. 13, 2004 2:00 PM PDT by Josh Grossberg

Not ready for prime-time? Apparently not ready for Broadway, either.

Saturday Night Live alumnus Chris Kattan has been bounced from his role in Nathan Lane's adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's musical The Frogs less than 10 days before the show's official opening at New York's Lincoln Center.

The 33-year-old comic actor, who played Xanthias, the slave/sidekick to Lane's wine-loving deity Dionysos for three weeks of previews, failed to click with producers and audiences alike and pulled out on Sunday following a phone call from director-choreographer Susan Stroman.

"He withdrew. It was a mutual decision between producers and Kattan," a spokesman for Lincoln Center Theater told E! Online.

Leap-frogging into Kattan's part on short notice will be Tony-winning stage veteran Roger Bart, who originated the role of flamboyant assistant Carmen Ghia in Mel Brooks' The Producers opposite Lane. Bart eventually moved into the role of Leo Bloom when Lane and Matthew Broderick exited the production.

Sondheim's Frogs, which debuted in 1974 at Yale University, is being updated by Lane from the book by Burt Shevelove. Based on Aristophane's classic comedy, the musical follows Dionysos as he journeys to Hades in search of a writer whose words can ease the troubles of humanity.

Opening night will proceed as planned on July 22, with Bart due to join the cast "as soon as he's ready," said the spokesman.

According to Bart's Website, that should come this week.

"If Stroman says, 'Come here, do this,' I say, 'Where do I show up?" Bart told the New York Daily News. "I'm excited to join Nathan."

Kattan's publicist did not return phone calls seeking comment.

But the funnyguy's departure isn't a huge surprise, given his lack of experience on the stage--a fact he noted himself in an interview last Friday with the New York Post.

"I'm the wild card in this production, because I don't come from the theater and I've never articulated this much in my life," said Kattan, better known for goofing off for eight years on SNL and hamming it up in such flicks as A Night at the Roxbury, Corky Romano and Undercover Brother than for Greek comedies.

Producers decided to take a chance on Kattan, figuring his comic timing and name value would play well opposite Lane in The Frogs, which also features six new tunes and lyrics from Sondheim.

For his part, however, Kattan admitted that his SNL-honed work ethic didn't quite cut it on stage.

"At SNL, you wouldn't necessarily do your 150 percent at rehearsal. Here [when you rehearse], if you mumble a line, they say, 'Let's do it again,' and I'd say, 'Oh, but if we're just rehearsing,' and they'd say, 'You have to do it again," Kattan said.

But Kattan, who was reportedly unhappy that his role had been scaled back over the last few months, vowed to give it his best shot.

"It's not like it's this huge, long run. It's just a few months and then you can walk away and say, I did this great play with Susan Stroman, Nathan Lane and Stephen Sondheim."

Hey, three weeks ain't bad.