No place that he’d rather be

Spending time with mild-mannered John Mahoney, 68, makes it hard to figure out why he often gets cast as the tough guy.

TV audiences know him as retired cop Marty Crane from the sitcom “Frasier,” a no-nonsense guy who delights in deflating the egos of pompous psychiatrist sons Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) and Niles (David Hyde Pierce). Or, more recently, they’ve seen him in HBO’s “In Treatment” as Walter, a high-powered but emotionally stunted chief executive whose insomnia and panic attacks mask far deeper issues.

And audiences will see the actor in another rough-and-tough role as Richard, a blind, drunk and ornery Irishman in Conor McPherson’s “The Seafarer.” The play opens Wednesday at the Geffen, staged by Geffen artistic director Randall Arney.

In the drama, it’s Christmas Eve in Dublin in the rundown home where Sharky (Andrew Connolly) looks after his aging brother, Richard (Mahoney), who’s recently gone blind due to a bizarrely comical accident: “He fell into a Dumpster while he was trying to retrieve some rolls of wallpaper,” Mahoney explains, deadpan. In the drama, Sharky, Richard, two old drinking buddies and a mysterious stranger play a game of poker that turns out to have life-or-death stakes.

Mahoney describes Richard as a man with a heart of gold but who also is a difficult roommate. “He’s a heavy drinker, he’s irascible and, to quote the playwright, his moods change from one minute to the next,” he says. “He probably bathes once a month, if he feels like it.”

Looking dapper and professorial in neatly pressed shirt and slacks, Mahoney seems both well-bathed and well-adjusted compared with the Richard he describes. He’s indefatigably polite, uses words like “golly” and doesn’t drink -- though he confesses to indulging in an occasional cigarette where the smoke won’t offend anyone.

In fact, one of the first things Mahoney brought up was his simple pleasure in an odd and magical thing that had happened to him the night before.

“Last night I got home to my apartment at about a quarter to 11, and I went to get an Orangina out of my fridge and something ran over my foot,” he said. “I thought, ‘God, what’s that, a rat?’ But I looked down and it was a little sparrow.”

The bird and Mahoney watched each other for a while. Then Mahoney grabbed a magazine and held it out; the sparrow hopped onto the magazine and Mahoney walked ever so slowly to the window to release the creature back outdoors. “I wonder, what does it mean?” Mahoney says, clearly delighted by the encounter. “It must mean something.”

To those who have worked with him, the fact that a man who delights in a chance encounter with a sparrow can portray a boozy hellion onstage speaks to Mahoney’s skill as an actor. And, says Mahoney, it’s a skill that he prefers to hone on the stage. “It’s where I started; it’s where my true love lies,” he says. “After 11 years of ‘Frasier,’ I’m in the financial position to do whatever I want. It doesn’t matter if they pay me $75 a week.”

“The Seafarer” is Mahoney’s second go-round in a McPherson play at the Geffen: In 2001, he was one of the storytellers gathered in a cozy pub in “The Weir,” also directed by Arney. And it’s Mahoney’s second time playing Richard in “Seafarer”; he essayed the role for Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company in a production that ran Dec. 4 through Feb. 8, also directed by Arney, who, like Mahoney, is a longtime ensemble member of Steppenwolf.

Mahoney relishes the language in McPherson’s plays; words are also what attracted him to the sharply scripted farce of “Frasier” and makes him a big fan of the British series “Fawlty Towers.” “That’s what theater is, isn’t it? It’s such a verbal medium compared to film,” he observes. “They say a picture is worth a thousand words -- but when you come to the theater, you expect to hear the thousand words.”

Mahoney is English but has a soft spot for Irish plays. “There’s just something poetic about them, even in the most mundane situations -- the language they use,” he says.

In the case of “Seafarer,” however, the Irishness proved a bit problematic. Mahoney said essaying the idiomatic Dubliner’s speech while wielding a blind man’s cane was a challenge -- but he figured that the newly blind Richard would also still be clumsy with a cane.

Besides, he says, “When it comes to acting and playing parts, I don’t do much research, to tell you the truth. I like to surprise myself. I just like to learn the lines and see what happens.”

Although his manner may be relentlessly pleasant, Mahoney exhibited his underlying toughness by choosing to take on two difficult roles at the same time: During the Steppenwolf run, Mahoney was also at work filming “In Treatment.” Now in its second season, the show follows psychoanalyst Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) through his week, capturing sessions with his patients, including Mahoney’s Walter.

“It was horrible,” Mahoney says -- though with a smile. “After the Sunday matinee at Steppenwolf, I would fly to L.A., get into my hotel at about 1 a.m., get up at 6 for makeup and rehearsal, work all day Monday and a half-day Tuesday, then get back on a plane Tuesday afternoon and just make it back to Chicago in time for the show.”

“In Treatment” show runner Warren Leight said Mahoney’s interpretation of the character of Walter was so strong that it led Leight to reshape the scripts as the show progressed.

“He surprised me all the time,” Leight says. “I was writing the sort of aging, shut-down white male that we all know, and there were times when I would assume that this would be the episode where he cracks. But he just understood something about Walter’s pride and the strength of his defenses that informed my next draft, it took longer than I expected . . . he got something about this guy that pushed me to keep piling it on Walter.”

Mahoney -- who unlike many actors says he’s never seen a therapist -- kept Byrne’s psychoanalyst character at bay while portraying Walter. But off-camera, Byrne, who is Irish, helped Mahoney work on his dialect for “The Seafarer” by reading the script aloud on tape with the proper Dublin inflections.

“I took the tape back to Steppenwolf,” he says, “and we all just devoured it.”

When not performing elsewhere, Mahoney leads a quiet life in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, where he can be near family and friends and confesses to having a CD player in every room. He pays visits to his weekend house in Wisconsin, “where I get in my little pontoon and float out into the middle of the lake and play some music.”

But he won’t get much chance to rest, as he is champing at the bit to try some of theater’s greatest roles.

“The wonderful thing about stage is that I can do the leading roles. I’m a little old, and I was never the leading man in TV or film -- I was a character man, and it’s fun to do the big roles, the Willy Lomans and the James Tyrones. And I think I’ll be doing ‘King Lear’ next year in Dublin, at the Rough Magic Theatre.”

Adds the ever-practical Mahoney about doing Lear: “I’ll have to quit smoking and really get in shape for that one. And I hope they give me a light Cordelia to drag around. . . . I just hope I get a very thin Cordelia.”

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‘The Seafarer’

Where: Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood

When: Opens Wednesday. 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays to Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 4 and 8:30 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends May 24

Price: $45 to $79

Contact: (310) 208-5454