At 72, Lithgow is only three years older than Tony Randall was when he was the final actor to play Gallimard in the original production. And a couple of people I spoke to back then felt that Randall was the best of the four, although I always wondered what it was like for audiences to hear Randall, famous as an opera buff, talk (as Gallmard) about how he didn't like opera.
My memory is that while Lithgow was playing it, there was a quote from him in Playbill about how extraordinarily exhausting he found the role. If my memory is correct on that, it's pretty unlikely that he'd have considered coming back to it almost 30 years later. I did think it was interesting, back when Randall was doing it, that a man so much older than Lithgow was playing the role that Lithgow had found so exhausting. |
